He went home and wrote to Mary. "_My impulse is to tell you no more than this, that I love you. I wrote to you this morning, and I have nothing to add that is news. But I feel an overpowering desire to insist on my love for you ... to do nothing for ever but love you and love you.... You see the mood I'm in! I went out of Dublin to-day, sulking and depressed because John Marsh had failed me and I was lonely, but now I'm extraordinarily happy. I feel that I have only to stretch out my hand and touch you ... and then I shall be depressed no more. This is not a letter. It has no beginning and it will have no end. It's an outpouring. To-night is very beautiful. I went up to my bedroom a few moments ago, and sat at the window looking over Stephen's Green. There was a blue mist hanging over the trees, and the sky was full of light and colour. I do not believe there is any place in the world where one sees so much of the sky as in Dublin. It reaches up and up until you feel that if a bird were to pierce the clouds with its beak, it would tear a hole in the heavens and let the universe in. And while I was sitting there, I felt very near to you, dearest. In ten days we shall be married, and then you will come with me and see these places, too. I shall become Irish over again when I show you my home, and I shall watch Ireland taking hold of you and absorbing you and making you as Irish as I am. You'll go on thinking that you're English until some one speaks disparagingly of Ireland, and then you'll flare up, and you'll be Irish, not only in nature, but in knowledge. Ireland does that to people, so you cannot hope to escape. Good-night, my very dear!_" 6 On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are tired and happy. As he crossed O'Connell Bridge, he stood for a few moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had transmuted the river to the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and the sunlight made the houses on the quays look warm and lovely, even though they were old and worn and discoloured. "In her heart," he thought, "Dublin is still a proud lady, although her dress be draggled!" He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were marching towards Liberty Hall. There were little girls in Gaelic dress at the head of them, accompanied by a pale, tired-looking woman, with tightened lips, who stumped heavily by the side of them; and following them, came young men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry labourers, misshapen by heavy toil and privation ... and as the company passed by, girls stood on the pavement and jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with tightened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed hair....