This beautiful cool stone does me good. Is it a paperweight or a cure for headache?

RICHARD

Bertha brought it home one day from the strand. She, too, says that it is beautiful.

ROBERT

(Lays down the stone quietly.) She is right.

(He raises his glass, and drinks. A pause.)

RICHARD

Is that all you wanted to say to me?

ROBERT

(Quickly.) There is something else. The vicechancellor sends you, through me, an invitation for tonight-- to dinner at his house. You know where he lives? (Richard nods.) I thought you might have forgotten. Strictly private, of course. He wants to meet you again and sends you a very warm invitation.

RICHARD

For what hour?

ROBERT

Eight. But, like yourself, he is free and easy about time. Now, Richard, you must go there. That is all. I feel tonight will be the turningpoint in your life. You will live here and work here and think here and be honoured here-- among our people.

RICHARD

(Smiling.) I can almost see two envoys starting for the United States to collect funds for my statue a hundred years hence.

ROBERT

(Agreeably.) Once I made a little epigram about statues. All statues are of two kinds. (He folds his arms across his chest.) The statue which says: How shall I get down? and the other kind (he unfolds his arms and extends his right arm, averting his head) the statue which says: In my time the dunghill was so high.

RICHARD

The second one for me, please.

ROBERT

(Lazily.) Will you give me one of those long cigars of yours?

(Richard selects a Virginia cigar from the box on the table and hands it to him with the straw drawn out.)

ROBERT

(Lighting it.) These cigars Europeanize me. If Ireland is to become a new Ireland she must first become European. And that is what you are here for, Richard. Some day we shall have to choose between England and Europe. I am a descendant of the dark foreigners: that is why I like to be here. I may be childish. But where else in Dublin can I get a bandit cigar like this or a cup of black coffee? The man who drinks black coffee is going to conquer Ireland. And now I will take just a half measure of that whisky, Richard, to show you there is no ill feeling.

RICHARD

(Points.) Help yourself.

ROBERT

(Does so.) Thanks. (He drinks and goes on as before.) Then you yourself, the way you loll on that lounge: then your boy's voice and also-- Bertha herself. Do you allow me to call her that, Richard? I mean as an old friend of both of you.

RICHARD

O, why not?

ROBERT

(With animation.) You have that fierce indignation which lacerated the heart of Swift. You have fallen from a higher world, Richard, and you are filled with fierce indignation, when you find that life is cowardly and ignoble. While I... shall I tell you?

RICHARD

By all means.

ROBERT

(Archly.) I have come up from a lower world and I am filled with astonishment when I find that people have any redeeming virtue at all.

RICHARD

(Sits up suddenly and leans his elbows on the table.) You are my friend, then?

ROBERT

(Gravely.) I fought for you all the time you were away. I fought to bring you back. I fought to keep your place for you here. I will fight for you still because I have faith in you, the faith of a disciple in his master.