t was passion that was
expressed in low and biting, and not in a loud tone. "You have known the
life of a prison: but you have not passed through the hell of Irish
poverty."... Then, after a pause, in which she seemed buried in an
agonizing retrospect, she said--"I would marry a cripple to help my
family."

She had scarcely said these words when her father entered. The father
was as much changed in Mat's eyes as the daughter; he could scarcely
walk; his feet seemed just able to bear him; and his hand was palsied.
He did not at first recognize Mat; and when at last he knew who it was,
said in the old voice, the familiar words which Mat so loathed, "Ah! the
crachure! Ah! the crachure!"

Mat now had the key to the hideous tragedy which had separated him from
the woman he loved, and who loved him. He looked quickly at her; but the
light of momentary excitement had died out of the face, and the
expression was now perfectly serene. Several reflections passed rapidly
through Mat's mind. He saw clearly that the girl had not a particle of
self-reproach; not a doubt of the rectitude or even the nobility of her
conduct; she had immolated herself with the same inflexible resolve and
unquestioning faith as the sublime murderer of Marat. Then passing
rapidly in mental review the history of so many self-murdered hearts, he
asked which was the more cruel--the Irish or the Indian suttee. Perhaps
in that moment Mat gained more knowledge than is given to other men in
years of that strangest of all, even feminine, problems--an Irish girl's
heart.

For a moment the two were left alone, for the first and only time in all
their lives.

"What?" said Mat, in an audible soliloquy, "is Irish life?" And then he
answered the question himself as she remained silent. "A tragedy, a
squalid tragedy!" But she looked at him cold, irresponsive, defiant, and
he rushed away before the old man came back with the whiskey.

The wreck of this girl's nature; her acceptance in full faith of the
sordid and terrible gospel of loveless marriage; the omnipotence of even
a little money in a land of abject and hopeless and helpless poverty,
brought the realities of Irish life with a clearness to his mind more
terrible than even uprooted houses and echoless streets.

He accepted the invitation of a friend to take a row up the river,
beautiful with its eternal and changeless beauty amid all this wreck of
hopes and blasting of lives.

They passed a small island.