went on Finola, 'that we ought to have asked for volunteers
to go out and fight, instead of nurses to cocker up the men who are
fools enough to get themselves shot. We'd have got them.'

'You would not,' said Tim. 'The clergy would have been dead against you.
They would have nipped the whole project in the bud without so much as
making a noise in doing it.'

'That's true,' said Grealy. 'Remember, Miss Goold, it was the priests
who cursed Tara, and the monks who broke the power of the Irish Kings. I
haven't worked the thing out yet, but I mean to show----'

Finola interrupted the poor man ruthlessly:

'Let's try it, anyway. Let's preach a crusade.'

'Not the least bit of good,' said Tim. 'Every blackguard in the country
is enlisted already in the Connaught Bangers or the Dublin Fusiliers,
or some confounded Militia regiment. There's nobody left but the nice,
respectable, goody-goody boys who wouldn't leave their mothers or miss
going to confession if you went down on your knees to them.'

'Well, then, the Irish troops ought to shoot their officers, and walk
over to the Boer camp,' said Finola savagely.

Hyacinth half smiled at what seemed to him a monstrous jest. Then, when
he perceived that she was actually in earnest, the smile froze into a
kind of grin. His hands trembled with the violence of his indignation.

'It would be devilish treachery,' he blurted out. 'The name of Irishman
will never be disgraced by such an act.'

Augusta Goold flung her cigarette into the grate, and rose from her
chair. She stood over Hyacinth, her hands clenched and her bosom heaving
rapidly. Her eyes blazed down into his until their scorn cowed him.

'There is no treachery possible for an Irishman,' she said, 'except
the one of fighting for England. Any deed against England--yes, _any_
deed--is glorious, and not shameful.'

Hyacinth was utterly quelled. He ventured upon no reply. Indeed, not
only did her violence render argument undesirable--and it seemed for
the moment that he would find himself in actual grips with a furious
Amazon--but her words carried with them a certain conviction. It
actually seemed to him while she spoke as if a good defence might be
made for Irish soldiers who murdered their officers and deserted to an
enemy in the field. It was not until hours afterwards, when the vivid
impression of Finola's face had faded from his recollection, when he had
begun to forget the flash of her eyes, the poise of her figure