d called Ireland Erin, and imagined one was remembering the
days of old, and so forth. [He whistles Let Erin Remember].

NORA. Did jever get a letter I wrote you last February?

LARRY. Oh yes; and I really intended to answer it. But I haven't
had a moment; and I knew you wouldn't mind. You see, I am so
afraid of boring you by writing about affairs you don't
understand and people you don't know! And yet what else have I to
write about? I begin a letter; and then I tear it up again. The
fact is, fond as we are of one another, Nora, we have so little
in common--I mean of course the things one can put in a letter--that
correspondence is apt to become the hardest of hard work.

NORA. Yes: it's hard for me to know anything about you if you
never tell me anything.

LARRY [pettishly]. Nora: a man can't sit down and write his life
day by day when he's tired enough with having lived it.

NORA. I'm not blaming you.

LARRY [looking at her with some concern]. You seem rather out of
spirits. [Going closer to her, anxiously and tenderly] You
haven't got neuralgia, have you?

NORA. No.

LARRY [reassured]. I get a touch of it sometimes when I am below
par. [absently, again strolling about] Yes, yes. [He begins to
hum again, and soon breaks into articulate melody].

Though summer smiles on here for ever,
Though not a leaf falls from the tree,
Tell England I'll forget her never,

[Nora puts down the knitting and stares at him].

O wind that blows across the sea.

[With much expression]

Tell England I'll forget her ne-e-e-e-ver
O wind that blows acro-oss--

[Here the melody soars out of his range. He continues falsetto,
but changes the tune to Let Erin Remember]. I'm afraid I'm boring
you, Nora, though you're too kind to say so.

NORA. Are you wanting to get back to England already?

LARRY. Not at all. Not at all.

NORA. That's a queer song to sing to me if you're not.

LARRY. The song! Oh, it doesn't mean anything: it's by a German
Jew, like most English patriotic sentiment. Never mind me, my
dear: go on with your work; and don't let me bore you.

NORA [bitterly]. Rosscullen isn't such a lively place that I am
likely to be bored by you at our first talk together after
eighteen years, though you don't seem to have much to say to me
after all.

LARRY. Eighteen years is a devilish long time, Nora. Now if it
had been eighteen minutes, or even eighteen months, we should be
able to pick up