I do not know how long I stood there: it may have been but a few minutes, yet it was long enough for me to realize that the simple act of entering the room was become an impossibility. It would have required too violent an effort, too sharp and brutal a wrench, an effort I shrank from as from physical pain. I must write to Katherine. How could I go in there as if nothing had happened? If she came out on to the terrace I might find courage to speak to her, but she would not come. Gerald, on the other hand, almost certainly would; and if he discovered me prowling about like this what would he think? I slipped away, then, like a veritable ghost, my footsteps making no noise upon the faded grass. CHAPTER LIII I wrote that night to Katherine, but she did not reply to my letter, and I had no heart to send a second. Two days passed, during which I did not go near Derryaghy, but took to gardening, and when Gerald came down on the second afternoon I offered this as my excuse for not going with him. The fact was that I felt uncomfortable in his society, not knowing how much he knew. He had witnessed my discomfiture on the night Katherine had cut me, and of course he must have questioned her afterwards. During these days I made one or two attempts to come to a more cordial relation with my father; yet it seemed to me that he suspected the genuineness of my timid advances, and at all events his unresponsiveness discouraged me from repeating them. On the evening of the third day, having nothing else to do, I strolled listlessly in the direction of the field occupied by the booths of the steam-circus proprietors. It was recognizable from afar by a luminous cloud that hung above it like a curtain of fire against the night. The wind was blowing from that direction, and, as I advanced, my ears were filled with the rough music blared out by a couple of steam-organs, a music broken every now and again by short convulsive shrieks as of demoniac laughter. Swings, shooting-galleries, throwing-competitions――all were in the full energy of life when I approached; but the chief centres of attraction were the two hobby-horse machines, brightly painted and flashing with mirrors and gilding. I mingled in the outer ring of spectators about the larger of these two wheeling monsters, and stood gazing at it, as it turned round swiftly and rhythmically to the throbbing din of brazen pipes. White puffs of steam shot up against the black sky in the coloured glare of naphtha lamps. Girls with flushed, excited faces, tossed hair and shining eyes, leaned sideways from the horses’ backs, laughed, swayed in a kind of innocent abandon toward their accompanying sweethearts. Arms were round waists, the pops of guns mingled with the blare of the music, the shrieks of the steam-whistle, the shrillness of feminine voices. Standing there, in lonely contemplation of all this Dionysian revelry, I felt as hopelessly out of touch with it, as if I