He was always the most gentle and tender of nurses, {282} and would sit by my side for hours without moving when I was ill, reading or thinking. After a short sleep I lay awake wondering what it would be best to say to Lockwood in the morning. I had told him that anyhow I would go up; but, as my lover said, what would be the use of it? And whatever I could make of Captain O'Shea's desertion--or practical desertion--of me, I knew absolutely nothing of his private life, and cared less. Our position would be worse if we were not enabled to marry, for we were inseparable while life lasted. Then, after going over the pros and cons till my brain felt on fire, I said irritably, "I don't believe you are listening to what I say!" He replied, "I am not, beloved; here is the telegram all written out for you while you slept. We have been longing for this freedom all these years, and now you are afraid!" I broke down and cried, because I feared for him and for his work, and he soothed me as one would a child as he told me that his life-work was Ireland's always, but that his heart and his soul were mine to keep for ever--since first he looked into my eyes that summer morning, ten years before. "Queenie," he went on, "put away all fear and regret for my public life. I have given, and will give, Ireland what is in me to give. That I have vowed to her, but my private life shall never belong to any country, but to one woman. There will be a howl, but it will be the howl of hypocrites; not altogether, for some of these Irish fools are genuine in their belief that forms and creeds can govern life and men; perhaps they are right so far as they can experience life. But I am not as they, for they are among the world's children. I am a man, and I have told these children what they want, and they clamour for it. {283} If they will let me, I will get it for them. But if they turn from me, my Queen, it matters not at all in the end. What the ultimate government of Ireland will be is settled, and it will be so, and what my share in the work has been and is to be, also. I do wish you would stop fretting about me. We know nothing of how or why, but only that we love one another, and that through all the ages is the one fact that cannot be forgotten nor put aside by us." He spoke slowly, with many silences between sentence and sentence, and presently I said: "But perhaps I have hurt your work." "No, you have not. I sometimes think that is why you came to me, for I was very ill then and you kept the life in me and the will to go on when I was very weary of it all; you have stood to me for comfort and strength and my very life. I have never been able to feel in the least sorry for having come into your life. It had to be, and the bad times I have caused you and the stones that have been flung and that will be flung at you are all no matter, because to us there is no one else in all the world that matters at all--when you get to the bottom of things."