"But children. You love children, Hedda. You know so much. Couldn't you
have been a governess in some great house?"

"O Shane, Shane _mio_, when will you understand?" Her calm voice had a
note of distress in it. "None can judge of another's life. None can
tell. None direct. What do you know of what passed before--I came to a
mean house in a mean town? I once opened a door I shouldn't have, and
left the lighted room ... for a warm blue darkness.... And I closed the
door behind me.... And daylight came. I am not of a breed that sues for
mercy. So I went ahead ... through the world. And I never look back,
Shane. I am no Lot's wife, to become a pillar of her own salt tears...."

"But Hedda, you are good. And this life--"

"Of course I am good, Shane. There is no man can say I did him wrong in
mind or body, or heart, either. And I am a comfort to many.... All I
have done is to outrage a convention of property that I don't believe
... Shane, do you know people cover greed with sentimentality and call
it virtue?"

"But, Hedda, the women don't see. They scorn you--"

"Do they? Poor souls. Let them! _Amigo mio_, I have a life. I have to
think, gage, act, concentrate. And when I want time of my own, Shane, I
have it. The housewife with her frowsy duties, being kissed
perfunctorily on the mat, the man who wears a stilted mask to the world,
and before her--lets go.... Ugh! And the _mondaine_ with her boredom ...
the hatred in wide houses.... Oh, I know. Sometimes I think it's so
wonderful, being free....

"O Shane, please don't be absurd, sentimental ... please, I know my way,
and find yours.... Tell me, do you know yet what day you sail?"

Section 8

A sailor in a jersey and reefer caught his arm in the Avenida de
Mayo....

"All filled up." Campbell uttered brusquely.

"It was no' that."

Campbell put his hand in his pocket looking for a coin.

"You'll be forgetting the Antrim glens, Shane Campbell." Shane flushed.
The coin in his fingers burned him.

"How did I know you were fro' the Antrim glens?"

"You've seen me a few times, though you'd hardly know me. Simon Fraser
of Ballycastle. You would no' recognize me, if you knew me, on account
of my hair being white. I was lost on the coast of Borneo for four
years. When I was lost my hair was black--maybe a wee sprinkle o'
gray--but what you might call black; and when I was picked up, and saw
myself in a looking-glass, it was white. They did no' know me when I