burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures
and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they
shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so
lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!

Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She
glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of
piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl He
was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is he)
stands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a
brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to him
and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been!
He of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes,
for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and
wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their
secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to
know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening
to and fro and little bats don't tell.

Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show
what a great person she was: and then she cried:

--Gerty! Gerty! We're going. Come on. We can see from farther up.

Gerty had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into
her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of
course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too
far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet
again, there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her
dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls
met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full
of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She
half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged
on tears, and then they parted.

Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy,
to Edy to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was
darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and
slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic
of her but with care and very slowly because--because Gerty MacDowell
was...

Tight boots? No. She's lame! O!

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why s