ra, come home, Mr Broadbent; and get your senses
back again. I think you're not accustomed to potcheen punch in
the evening after your tea.

BROADBENT [horrified]. Do you mean to say that I--I--I--my God!
that I appear drunk to you, Miss Reilly?

NORA [compassionately]. How many tumblers had you?

BROADBENT [helplessly]. Two.

NORA. The flavor of the turf prevented you noticing the strength
of it. You'd better come home to bed.

BROADBENT [fearfully agitated]. But this is such a horrible doubt
to put into my mind--to--to--For Heaven's sake, Miss Reilly, am I
really drunk?

NORA [soothingly]. You'll be able to judge better in the morning.
Come on now back with me, an think no more about it. [She takes
his arm with motherly solicitude and urges him gently toward the
path].

BROADBENT [yielding in despair]. I must be drunk--frightfully
drunk; for your voice drove me out of my senses [he stumbles over
a stone]. No: on my word, on my most sacred word of honor, Miss
Reilly, I tripped over that stone. It was an accident; it was
indeed.

NORA. Yes, of course it was. Just take my arm, Mr Broadbent,
while we're goin down the path to the road. You'll be all right
then.

BROADBENT [submissively taking it]. I can't sufficiently
apologize, Miss Reilly, or express my sense of your kindness when
I am in such a disgusting state. How could I be such a bea-- [he
trips again] damn the heather! my foot caught in it.

NORA. Steady now, steady. Come along: come. [He is led down to
the road in the character of a convicted drunkard. To him there
it something divine in the sympathetic indulgence she substitutes
for the angry disgust with which one of his own countrywomen
would resent his supposed condition. And he has no suspicion of
the fact, or of her ignorance of it, that when an Englishman is
sentimental he behaves very much as an Irishman does when he is
drunk].

ACT III

Next morning Broadbent and Larry are sitting at the ends of a
breakfast table in the middle of a small grass plot before
Cornelius Doyle's house. They have finished their meal, and are
buried in newspapers. Most of the crockery is crowded upon a
large square black tray of japanned metal. The teapot is of brown
delft ware. There is no silver; and the butter, on a dinner
plate, is en bloc. The background to this breakfast is the house,
a small white slated building, accessible by a half-glazed door.
A person coming out into the garden by this door wou