When John Brennan went to his room after his father's outburst it was with the intention of doing some preparation for the morrow's work at the college; but although he opened several books in turn, he could feel no quickening of knowledge in his mind.... There she was again continually recurring to his thoughts. And now she was far grander. This was the fear that had always been hidden in his heart,—that somehow her friendship with Ulick was not a thing that should have happened. But he had considered it a reality he could not attempt to question. Yet he knew that but for Ulick she must be very near to him. And Ulick had admitted his unworthiness, and so the separation was at an end.  
It was surprising that this should have happened now. His mind sprang back to all that tenderness with which his thoughts of her had been surrounded through these long days of dreaming, when he had contrived to meet her, as if by accident, on her way from school.
 
All through the next day his heart was upon her; the thought of her would give peace. Into every vacant moment she would come with the full light of her presence. He had suddenly relapsed into the mood that had imprisoned him after the summer holidays. He stood aloof from Father Considine and did not wish to see him through the whole of his long day in the college at Ballinamult.... All the way home he pictured her. She was[Pg 254] luring him now as she had always lured him—towards a fairer vision of the valley.
 
He noticed how the summer was again flooding over the fields like a great river spilling wide. It was a glorious coincidence that she should be returning to him now, a creature of brightness at a time of beauty.
 
The road seemed short this pleasant afternoon, and the customary feeling of dusty weariness was not upon him as he leapt lightly off the bicycle at his mother's door. Mrs. Brennan came out to meet him eagerly. This was no unusual occurrence now that he had again begun to ascend the ladder of the high condition she had planned for him. She was even a far prouder woman now, for, somehow, she had always half remembered the stain of charity hanging over his uprise in England. Besides this he was nearer to her, moving intimately through the valley, a living part of her justification.... Her fading eyes now looked out tenderly at her son. There seemed to be a great light in them this afternoon, a great light of love for him.... He was moved beneath their gaze. And still she continued to smile upon him in a weak way as within the grip of some strong excitement. He saw when he entered that his dinner was not set out as usual on the white table in the kitchen.... She brought him into the sewing-room. And still she had the same smile trembling upon her lips and the same light in her eyes.... All this was growing mysterious and oppressive. But his mood was proof against sad influences. It must be some tale of good fortune come to their house of which his mother had now to tell.
 
"D'ye know what, John? The greatest thing ever is after happening!"
 
[Pg 255]
 
"Is that a fact, mother?"
 
"Though mebbe 'tis not right for me to tell you and you all as one as a priest, I may say. But sure you're bound to hear it, and mebbe a little knowledge of the kind might not be amiss even to one in your exalted station. And then to make it better, it concerns two very near friends of yours, Mr. Ulick Shannon and Miss Rebecca Kerr, I thank you!"
 
John Brennan's mind leaped immediately to interest. Were they gone back to one another, and after what he had thought to-day? This was the question his lips carried inwardly to himself.
 
"I don't know how I can tell you. But Father O'Keeffe was at school to-day in a great whet. He made a show of her before the children, Mrs. Wyse and Miss McKeon, of course, giving him good help. He dismissed her, and told her to go about her business. He'll mebbe speak of her publicly from the altar on Sunday."
 
"And what is it, mother, what—?"
 
"Oh, she's going to have a misfortune, me son. She's going to be a mother, God bless us all! and not married or a ha'porth!"
 
"O God!"
 
"But sure she put in for nothing else, with her going up and all that to Dublin to have her dresses made, instead of getting them done nice and quiet and modest and respectable be me. I may tell you that I was more than delighted to hear it."
 
"Well now, and the—"
 
John was biting his lips in passion, but she took another view of it as she interrupted him.
 
[Pg 256]
 
"Ah, you may well ask who he is, who but that scoundrel Ulick Shannon, that I was never done asking you not to speak to. You were young and innocent, of course, and could not be expected to know what I know. But mebbe you'll avoid him now, although I think he won't be long here, for mebbe Father O'Keeffe'll run him out of the parish. Maybe not though, for his uncle has bags of money. Indeed I wouldn't put it apast him if he was the lad encouraged him to this, for the Shannons were always blackguards in their hearts.... But it'll be great to hear Father O'Keeffe on Sunday. I must be sure and go to his Mass. Oh, it'll be great to hear him!"
 
"Yes, I suppose it will be great to hear him."
 
John spoke out of the gathering bitterness of his heart.
 
"I wonder what'll become of her now. I wonder where'll she go. Oh, to Dublin, I suppose. She was always fond of it."
 
His mother was in a very ecstasy of conjecture as to the probable extent of Rebecca's fate. And this was the woman who had always expressed a melting tenderness in her actions towards him. This was his mother who had spoken now with all uncharitableness. There was such an absence of human pity in her words as most truly appalled him.... Very quickly he saw too that it was upon his own slight connection with this tragic thing her mind was dwelling. This was to him now a token, not of love, but rather of enormous selfishness.... Her eyes were upon him still, watering in admiration with a weak gleam.... The four walls seemed to be moving in to crush him after the manner of some medieval torture chamber.... Within them, too, was beginning to rise a horrid stench as of dead human things.... This[Pg 257] ghastliness that had sprung up between mother and son seemed to have momentarily blotted out the consciousness of both. They stared at one another now with glassy, unseeing eyes.
 
After three Rebecca took her lonely way from the school. Neither Mrs. Wyse nor Monica McKeon had a word for her at parting. Neither this woman, who was many times a mother, nor this girl who might yet be a mother many times. They were grinning loudly and passing some sneer between them, as they moved away from one another alone.
 
Down the valley road she went, the sunlight dazzling her tired eyes. A thought of something that had happened upon this day last year came with her remembrance of the date. It was the first anniversary of some slight, glad event that had brought her happiness, and yet what a day it was of dire happening? Just one short year ago she had not known the valley or Ulick or this fearful thing.... There were friends about her on this day last year and the sound of laughter, and she had not been so far distant from her father's house. And, O God! to think that now she was so much alone.
 
Suddenly she became aware that there was some one running by her side and calling "Miss Kerr! Miss Kerr!"
 
"Oh, Janet Comaskey!" she said, turning. "Is it you?"
 
"Yes, Miss Kerr. I want to tell you that I was talking to God last night, and I was telling Him about you. He asked me did I like you, and I said I did. 'And so do I,' said He. 'I like Miss Kerr very much,' He said, 'for she's very nice, very, very nice.'"
 
[Pg 258]
 
Rebecca had never disliked this queer child, but she loved her now, and bending down, warmly kissed her wild face.
 
"Thanks, miss. I only wanted to tell you about God," said Janet, dropping behind.
 
Rebecca was again alone, but now she was within sight of the house of Sergeant McGoldrick. It seemed to be dozing there in the sunlight. She began to question herself did those within already know ...? Now that the full publicity of her condition seemed imminent an extraordinary feeling of vanity was beginning to take possession of her. She took off her dust-coat and hung it upon her arm. Thus uncloaked she would face the eyes of Mrs. McGoldrick and her daughters, Euphemia and Clementina, and the eyes, very probably, of John Ross McGoldrick and Neville Chamberlain McGoldrick....
 
But when she entered the house she experienced the painful stillness of a tomb-like place. There was no one to be seen. She went upstairs with a kind of faltering in her limbs, but her head was erect and her fine eyes were flashing.... Even still was she soaring beyond and beyond them. Her eye was caught by a note pinned upon her door. It seemed very funny and, despite her present condition of confusion and worry, she smiled, for this was surely a melodramatic trick that Mrs. McGoldrick had acquired from the character of her reading.... Still smiling, she tore it open. It read like a proclamation, and was couched in the very best handwriting of Sergeant McGoldrick.
 
"Miss Kerr,
 
Rev. Louis O'Keeffe, P.P., Garradrimna, has given[Pg 259] notice that, on account of certain deplorable circumstances, we are to refuse you permission to lodge with us any longer. This we hasten to do without any regret, considering that, to oblige you at the instigation of Father O'Keeffe, we broke the Regulation of the Force, which forbids the keeping of lodgers by any member of that body. We hereby give you notice to be out of this house by 6 p.m. on this evening, May —, 19—, having, it is understood, by that time packed up your belongings and discharged your liabilities to Mrs. McGoldrick. Father O'Keeffe has, very magnanimously, arranged that Mr. Charles Clarke is to call for you with his motor and take you with all possible speed to the station at Kilaconnaghan.
 
Sylvester McGoldrick (Sergeant, R.I.C.)."
 
The official look of the pronouncement seemed only to increase its gloomy finality, but the word "magnanimously," fresh from the dictionary at the Barrack, made her laugh outright. The offense she had committed was unnamed, too terrible for words. She was being sentenced like a doomed Easter rebel.... Yet, even still, she was not without some thought of the practical aspect of her case. She owed thirty shillings to Mrs. McGoldrick. This would leave her very little, out of the few pounds she had saved from her last instalment of salary, with which to face the world. This, of course, if Ulick did not come.... And here was her dinner, set untidily in the stuffy room where the window had not been opened since the time she had left it this morning in confusion. And the whole house was quiet as the[Pg 260] grave. She never remembered to have heard it so quiet at any other time. It seemed as if all this silence had been designed with a studied calculation of the pain it would cause. There was no kindness in this woman either, although she too was a mother and had young daughters. It appeared so greatly uncharitable that in these last terrible moments she could not cast from her the small and pitiful enmity she had begun upon the evening of Rebecca's arrival in the valley. She would not come even now and help her pack up her things, and she so weary?... But it was easily done. The few articles that had augmented her wardrobe since her coming to the valley would go into the basket she had used to carry those which were barely necessary for her comfort when she went to that lonely cottage in Donegal.... The mean room was still bare as when she had first come to it. She had not attempted to decorate it. In a pile in one corner stood the full series of Irish School Weeklies and Weldon's Ladies' Journals she had purchased since her coming here. She had little use for either of these publications now, little use for the one that related to education or the other that related to adornment.
 
There came a feverish haste upon her to get done with her preparations for departure, and soon they were completed. She had her trunk corded and all ready. She had no doubt that Ulick would meet her upon The Road of the Dead at 5.30, the hour she had named in the letter of this morning. It was lucky she had so accurately guessed her possible time of departure, although somehow she had had no notion this morning of leaving so[Pg 261] soon. But already it was more than 4.30 by her little wristlet watch. She put on her best dress, which had been left out on the bed, and redid her hair. It was still the certain salvage from the wreck she was becoming. Ulick or any other man, for all he had ruined her, must still love her for that hair of gold. It needed no crown at all, but a woman's vanity was still hers, and she put on a pretty hat which Ulick had fancied in Dublin. She had worn it for the first time last summer in Donegal, and it became her better than any hat she had ever worn.... What would they say if they saw her moving about in this guise, so brazenly as it seemed, when she might be spoken of from the altar on Sunday?
 
Now fell upon her a melancholy desire to see the chapel. There was yet time to go there and pray just as she had thought of praying on her first evening on coming to Garradrimna. She took a final glance at the little, mean room. It had not been a room of mirth for her, and she was not sorry to leave it—there was the corded trunk to tell the tale of its inhospitality. She took the money for Mrs. McGoldrick from her purse and put it into an envelope.... Going downstairs she left ............