"O Shane, Shane _mio_, when will you understand?" Her calm voice had a note of distress in it. "None can judge of another's life. None can tell. None direct. What do you know of what passed before--I came to a mean house in a mean town? I once opened a door I shouldn't have, and left the lighted room ... for a warm blue darkness.... And I closed the door behind me.... And daylight came. I am not of a breed that sues for mercy. So I went ahead ... through the world. And I never look back, Shane. I am no Lot's wife, to become a pillar of her own salt tears...." "But Hedda, you are good. And this life--" "Of course I am good, Shane. There is no man can say I did him wrong in mind or body, or heart, either. And I am a comfort to many.... All I have done is to outrage a convention of property that I don't believe ... Shane, do you know people cover greed with sentimentality and call it virtue?" "But, Hedda, the women don't see. They scorn you--" "Do they? Poor souls. Let them! _Amigo mio_, I have a life. I have to think, gage, act, concentrate. And when I want time of my own, Shane, I have it. The housewife with her frowsy duties, being kissed perfunctorily on the mat, the man who wears a stilted mask to the world, and before her--lets go.... Ugh! And the _mondaine_ with her boredom ... the hatred in wide houses.... Oh, I know. Sometimes I think it's so wonderful, being free.... "O Shane, please don't be absurd, sentimental ... please, I know my way, and find yours.... Tell me, do you know yet what day you sail?" Section 8 A sailor in a jersey and reefer caught his arm in the Avenida de Mayo.... "All filled up." Campbell uttered brusquely. "It was no' that." Campbell put his hand in his pocket looking for a coin. "You'll be forgetting the Antrim glens, Shane Campbell." Shane flushed. The coin in his fingers burned him. "How did I know you were fro' the Antrim glens?" "You've seen me a few times, though you'd hardly know me. Simon Fraser of Ballycastle. You would no' recognize me, if you knew me, on account of my hair being white. I was lost on the coast of Borneo for four years. When I was lost my hair was black--maybe a wee sprinkle o' gray--but what you might call black; and when I was picked up, and saw myself in a looking-glass, it was white. They did no' know me when I got back to Ballycastle." "Would you care for a drink, Simon?" "I don't care much either way, Shane Campbell. And if I wanted a drink bad, I always have the silver for 't. I would no' have you think I stopped you for to cadge a drink. I'm no' that kind of man. But I was wi' your uncle Alan when he died. Or to be exact, I saw him just before he died. I was visiting in Cushendun. I have a half-brither there you might know, Tamas McNeil, Red Tam they ca' him. And whiles I was there, I saw Alan Donn go down." "My uncle Alan dead! Why, man, you're crazy--" "Your uncle Alan's a dead man." "You're mistaken, man. It's some one else."