nd a way; and our ways may draw together again and we may make
holiday as before. And how peacefully the good ships used to lie in the
same harbour, under the same sun; it seemed as if they had reached
their goal, and it seemed as if there was a goal. But soon the mighty
sway of our tasks laid on us as from of old sundered and drove us into
different seas and different zones; and it may be that we shall never
meet again and it may be that we shall meet and not know each other, so
deeply have the different seas and suns changed us. The law that is
over us decreed that we must become strangers one to the other; and for
this we must reverence each other the more, and for this the memory of
our past friendship becomes more sacred. Perhaps there is a vast
invisible curve and orbit and our different goals and ways are parcel
of it, infinitesimal segments. Let us uplift ourselves to this thought!
But our life is too short and our sight too feeble for us to be friends
except in the sense of this sublime possibility. So, let us believe in
our stellar friendship though we must be enemies on earth."

"A deep and mysterious truth," he said, "I must go, I must go," he said
to himself. "My Irish life is ended. There is a starry orbit, and
Ireland and I are parts of it, 'and we must believe in our stellar
friendship though we are enemies upon earth.'"

He wandered about admiring the large windless evening and the bright
bay. Great men had risen up in Ireland and had failed before him, and
it were easy to account for their failure by saying they were not close
enough to the tradition of their race, that they had just missed it,
but some of the fault must be the fault of Ireland.... The anecdote
varies, but substantially it is always the same story: The interests of
Ireland sacrificed to the interests of Rome.

There came a whirring sound, and high overhead he saw three great birds
flying through the still air, and he knew them to be wild geese flying
south....

War had broken out in South Africa, Irishmen were going out to fight
once again; they were going to fight the stranger abroad when they
could fight him at home no longer. The birds died down on the horizon,
and there was the sea before him, bright and beautiful, with ships
passing into the glimmering dusk, and among the hills a little mist was
gathering. He remembered the great pagans who had wandered over these
hills before scapulars and rosaries were invented. His thoughts