The soft beauty of the Latin word touched with an enchanting touch the dark of the evening, with a touch fainter and more persuading than the touch of music or of a woman’s hand. The strife of their minds was quelled. The figure of a woman as she appears in the liturgy of the church passed silently through the darkness: a white-robed figure, small and slender as a boy, and with a falling girdle. Her voice, frail and high as a boy’s, was heard intoning from a distant choir the first words of a woman which pierce the gloom and clamour of the first chanting of the passion: —_Et tu cum Jesu Galilæo eras._ And all hearts were touched and turned to her voice, shining like a young star, shining clearer as the voice intoned the proparoxyton and more faintly as the cadence died. The singing ceased. They went on together, Cranly repeating in strongly stressed rhythm the end of the refrain: And when we are married, O, how happy we’ll be For I love sweet Rosie O’Grady And Rosie O’Grady loves me. —There’s real poetry for you, he said. There’s real love. He glanced sideways at Stephen with a strange smile and said: —Do you consider that poetry? Or do you know what the words mean? —I want to see Rosie first, said Stephen. —She’s easy to find, Cranly said. His hat had come down on his forehead. He shoved it back and in the shadow of the trees Stephen saw his pale face, framed by the dark, and his large dark eyes. Yes. His face was handsome and his body was strong and hard. He had spoken of a mother’s love. He felt then the sufferings of women, the weaknesses of their bodies and souls: and would shield them with a strong and resolute arm and bow his mind to them. Away then: it is time to go. A voice spoke softly to Stephen’s lonely heart, bidding him go and telling him that his friendship was coming to an end. Yes; he would go. He could not strive against another. He knew his part. —Probably I shall go away, he said. —Where? Cranly asked. —Where I can, Stephen said. —Yes, Cranly said. It might be difficult for you to live here now. But is it that makes you go? —I have to go, Stephen answered. —Because, Cranly continued, you need not look upon yourself as driven away if you do not wish to go or as a heretic or an outlaw. There are many good believers who think as you do. Would that surprise you? The church is not the stone building nor even the clergy and their dogmas. It is the whole mass of those born into it. I don’t know what you wish to do in life. Is it what you told me the night we were standing outside Harcourt Street station? —Yes, Stephen said, smiling in spite of himself at Cranly’s way of remembering thoughts in connexion with places. The night you spent half an hour wrangling with Doherty about the shortest way from Sallygap to Larras.