Saturday 18 May 2013

of late and of her odd ways and sayings. He sat listening of the words and following the ways of adventure that lay open in the coals, arches and vaults and winding galleries and jagged caverns.

Suddenly he became aware of something in the doorway. A skull appeared suspended in the gloom of the doorway. A feeble creature like a monkey was there drawn thither by the sound of voices at the fire. A whining voice came from the door, asking?

----Is that Josephine?

The old bustling woman answered cheerily from the fireplace:

----No, Ellen. It's Stephen.

----O...O, good evening, Stephen.

He answered the greeting and saw a silly smile break over the face in the doorway.

----Do you want anything, Ellen? asked the old woman at the fire.

But she did not answer the question and said:

----I thought it was Josephine. I thought you were Josephine, Stephen.

And repeating this several times, she fell to laughing feebly.

He was sitting in the midst of a children's party at Harold's Cross. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him and he took little part in the games. The children, wearing the spoils of their crackers, danced and romped noisily and, though he tried to share their merriment, he felt himself a gloomy figure amid the gay cocked hats and sunbonnets.

But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug corner of the room he began to taste the joy of his loneliness. The mirth, which in the beginning of the evening had seemed to him false and trivial, was like a soothing air to him, passing gaily by his senses, hiding

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