n alien to him. It was not that he hated
them, not that he was uncomfortable among them; but the thought of close
mental or spiritual or physical contact with them put him in a panic, as
one might be in a panic at the thought of contact with some Chinaman, or
Eskimo. The women of the better class in ports importuned him, but he
passed with a grave humorous smile and an unexpected courtesy. His
friends' wives or acquaintances could get nothing out of him but a grave
answer to any questions they might put, so that they characterized him
as a stick. And at home in Ulster, whither he went after occasional
voyages, where Robin More still drowsed over his books; where Alan Donn
still hunted and fished and golfed, haler at five and fifty than a boy
in his early twenties; and where his mother sat and did beautiful
broidery, dumbly, inimically, cold as a fish, secretive as a badger,
there he would meet the women of the Antrim families, women who knew of
the disaster of his marriage, and they would look approvingly at his
firm face and smiling, steady eyes, and they would say: "A man, thon! He
could be a good friend. You could trust him, a woman could." They were
unco good folk, Antrim folk.

For the peasant girls around he had always a laugh and a joke. And for
the young girls from school he had always a soft spot in his heart
somehow, appreciating them as one appreciates the first primrose or a
puppy dog playing on the lawn or the lark in the clear air. There came
such a current of beauty and freshness from them.... New from the hand
of the Maker.... They were pausing now, as the wind pauses on the
tide.... And in a little while the world, the damned world!... And so he
treated them with a great gravity, answering their questions on
geography, telling them what an estuary was, and what the trade-winds,
and how a typhoon came and paused and passed: and how jute and grain and
indigo were taken from Calcutta, and of the Hooghly, the most difficult
river in the world to navigate, and of the shoal called "James and
Mary".... And they listened to him with wide-open, violet eyes....

And there were two women, Leah Fraser, a slight woman with hair smooth
and reddish like a gold coin, and eyes that thought and saw back of
things, and slender, beautiful hands, and she moved with the dignity of
a swan.... And there was Anne MacNeill, who handled a horse as a man
would, and was a great archer--she could shoot as far as Alan could
drive a