The idea seemed for the moment a perfectly brilliant one, a haven of refuge, a complete solution for all the miseries of the past few weeks. It stood out before her as a splendid spirited programme, brimful of satisfaction, brimful, above all, of a delightful promise of vengeance. Murdough’s rage, Murdough’s scorn of poor Teige, Murdough’s fury at herself, Murdough’s attempts to change her resolution, her own air of jaunty indifference--a sort of parody of his former ones--surely, surely it should be done, and done, too, the very next day! She got up and moved about the platform with a sense of having regained her old liberty, with a sense of being once more Grania O’Malley, the cleverest, strongest, richest girl on the whole island. She was about to return to the cabin when--suddenly, like a thunderbolt--the reaction came. She stopped short with a feeling of absolute terror, a feeling of having taken some irrevocable step, a feeling of sheer panic. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no!’ she cried aloud. ‘Oh, no, no, no, my God! Sure you _know_ I didn’t mean it. You know right _well_ I didn’t. ’Twas only mad I was! just mad, out and out, no other!’---- Mean it? Better be ill used by Murdough; beaten by Murdough; toil, drudge, be killed by Murdough; better have her heart broken; better have to give up the farm, and be ruined by Murdough, than live prosperously and comfortably with anyone else! The thought of the cabin seen a few weeks before at Cashla rushed back suddenly upon her mind, but now with none of that previous sense of disgust, none of that horror of revolt and loathing which had filled her then. Even in this extremity, even so, dead drunk in a corner, Murdough was still Murdough--the first; the only one. Idle? yes; tipsy? yes; cold, unkind, indifferent even? yes, yes, yes, still he was _Murdough_, her Murdough, always the same Murdough, and what did anything else matter? The love that had come down from the very beginning of things, the love that had never known a break, the love that was a part of herself, a part of everything she saw and touched, of everything she could imagine, the tenderness that had curled itself subtly into every fibre of her body, was not to be dislodged in so summary a fashion. It clung tenaciously; clung only the harder because it ought to be dislodged, because she herself wished to dislodge it. A sudden wave of desperate love, of tender, reckless passion, swept through her, and she stretched out her arms. ‘Auch, Murdough, _Murdougheen_,’ she murmured tenderly. ‘Where are you, Murdough? where are you then, at all, at all, this dark night? Arrah, come to your poor Grania! Where are you, dear? where are you?’