"You know how she enters, Shane. She comes in reading a letter. She is alone on the stage, in _Macbeth's_ castle of Inverness: '"They met me in the day of success,"' she reads--_Macbeth_ is writing of the witches in the desert place: '"and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge."' I came on as I always came on.... And the moment I left the wings, Shane, saw the audience, a strange thing happened.... Illusion died, not died ... but was dead.... And there I was supposed to be reading a letter that had never been written by people who had never possibly an existence, before an audience who had paid a little money to be amused.... I couldn't read it. I just couldn't.... "Behind me in the wings they were prompting, whispering fiercely.... But I couldn't.... I stood there.... Then I said: I'll go off the stage. But I couldn't do that even.... My feet were shackled to the ground.... I seemed to have been charmed.... My hand fell to my side.... And then a panic came. My knees hit one another. My teeth chattered ... awful, awful.... "There was such a silence. The audience stirred, whispered.... Then some one laughed.... Never laugh, Shane, suddenly, with me.... I crumpled up. They rang the curtain down ... I stole away to Ireland.... Whenever I am not hating--enough, the thought of that laugh comes to me...." She shivered on her seat. "That was only nervousness, Granya. Somebody got nervous and laughed." "No, Shane, no." "They talk of people laughing in the face of death. It's just a nervous action, Granya." "I tell you, no, Shane." She grew vehement. "It's a cruel country, England. And Shane, they hate us Irish. As long as we are pleasant, witty, as long as we are buffoons ... but let us be human beings, Shane, and they hate us." "Don't be silly, Granya!" "I'm not silly, Shane. I know. They hate us because we have something they have not. The starved Irish peasant is higher than the English peer. He has a song in his heart, a gay song or a sad song, and his eyes see wonders...." "But, Granya, we are only a little people, and they all but rule the world.... You are wrong. They don't hate us." "Do you remember Haman, Shane; Haman who had everything: "'And Haman told them of ... all the things wherein the king had promoted'; and he said: 'Yet all this availeth me nothing so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.'" "Shane, do you remember how Haman died?" "Granya!" She rose. Her hands stretched out to the Irish hills. Her voice took on the throbbing of drums: "Oh! the Erne shall run red With redundance of blood, The earth shall rock beneath our tread, And flame wrap hill and wood, And gun-peal and slogan-cry Make many a glen serene, Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die, My dark Rosaleen! My own Rosaleen!" "Poor Granya!" he said. He caught and kissed her hand. She let her other fall on his shoulder for an instant.