But he loved England, too. There had been nights when he had loved London as a man might love his mother ... when the curve of the Thames, and the dark shine of its water against the arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the bulging dome of St. Paul's rising proudly out of the haze and smoke, and the view of the little humpy hills at Harrow that was seen from the Hampstead Heath ... when all these became like living things that loved him and were loved by him. Once, with Gilbert, he had wandered over Romney Marsh, from Hythe to Rye, and had felt that Kent and Sussex were as close to him as Antrim and Down. And Devonshire, from north and south, was friendly and native to him. He had tramped about Exmoor and had seen the red deer running swiftly from the hunt, and had climbed a bare scarp of Dartmoor, startling the wild ponies so that they ran off with their long tails flying in the air, scattering the flocks of sheep in their flight. The very names of the Devonshire rivers were like homely music to him, and he would say the names over to himself for the pleasure of their sound: Taw and Tamar and Torridge, the Teign and the Dart and the Exe, and the rivers about Boveyhayne, the Sid and the Otter, the Coly, the Axe and the Yarty.... "I'm not de-nationalised," he insisted. "I love Ireland and England. I'm part of them and they are part of me, and we shall never be separate...." 10 He had stayed at Ballymartin until he had completed "The Wayward Man." His father's health had varied greatly, but soon after the publication of the new novel, it mended and, although he did not recover his old strength and vigour, he was well enough to move about and superintend the work on his farm. "You can go back to London now, Henry!" he said to his son one morning, after breakfast. "I know you're just itchin' to get back there, an' I'm sure I'm sick, sore an' tired of the sight of you. Away off with you, now!" And Henry, protesting that he did not wish to go, had gone to London. Gilbert's second comedy, "Sylvia," had been produced by Sir Geoffrey Mundane and, like "The Magic Casement," had achieved a fair amount of success. "But I haven't done anything big yet," Gilbert complained to Henry. "My aim's better than it was, but I'm still missing the point. Perhaps the next one will hit it...." In London, Henry began "The Fennels," but after he had written a couple of chapters, he found himself unable to proceed with it. "I must go back to Ireland," he said to Gilbert. "I want the feel of Ulster. I can't get it into this book unless I'm there, somehow!" And so, sooner than he had anticipated, he returned to Ballymartin, where "The Fennels" was finished, and there he stayed until Gilbert wrote and asked him to join him at Tre'Arrdur Bay. "You can't get much nearer to Ireland than that," he wrote: "You hop into the boat at Kingstown and hop out of it again at Holyhead and there you are!..."