“Are you surprised?”

“Oh, no. But I’d never heard it before. It’s a wonderful phrase.”

“Wilde was one of the wittiest men who ever lived.”

“I know. I’ve read his plays. Under the bedclothes with a flashlight.” She caught his look and added: “That was at school. They were strict about the books we got, but we used to smuggle them in. I also read De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

“You were interested in Wilde at that age?”

“Oh yes—and my great-uncle often talked about him—still does. He knew him. They were at T.C.D. together.” Again she intercepted the look. “That’s Trinity College, Dublin.”

He gaped, a little enchanted by this strange Irish world in which there could be so much intimacy and innocence combined; for of all the reasons for being concerned about Wilde, surely the fact that one’s great-uncle had been at college with him was unmatchable.

She broke into his reverie by saying: “Did YOU ever have that feeling —that you could pick your teeth with the spire of a cathedral?”

The answer that came to his mind (that he was enjoying such a sensation there and then) was too simple and astonishing to confess, so he said: “Well, on a first night when you know the play’s a hit you feel pretty good.” (He had never had this experience.)

She nodded, more with encouragement than assent, and he went on feverishly: “And sometimes also it happens at quieter moments—when you’re alone or with just one other person… the heart suddenly beating a little faster, putting its private exclamation mark at the end of every thought.”

“That’s not a bad phrase either.” (It was his own, but he had used it before in some article.) “You could be Irish, the way the words come.”

He laughed. “A real playboy of the western world, with an American accent.”

“Yes, and you ought to visit the West, by the way—OUR West— Kerry, Clare, Connemara…”

“Perhaps I will when I’ve straightened out a few ideas about Ireland in general.”

“Not too straight or they’ll surely not be right. Remember we’re a twisted people.”

“And I’m a twisted man.”

She said quietly: “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, nothing. A joke. Can’t I joke too? But I AM getting a feeling of this country and I think I DO know what you mean when you call it twisted.”

It was true that he was already aware of Ireland as an atmosphere— something at once garrulous and secretive, warm-hearted yet slightly mocking, as if after a thousand years of insolubility a problem could become itself a kind of dark inscrutable answer. So far he had been in Dublin a week and had written not a line; all he had done was to sightsee, read newspapers, talk to everyone he met, hear a few shots in the distance, and go to the theatre. Yet deeper than such surface contacts was something that came to him by the same channel that it could pass from him to others—a communication of excitement, as he had called it, so that, had Dublin been a play, he would have been aching to put it on the stage. There was a symmetry in the emotion that the city gave him, and his meeting with Carey seemed part of it.

She on her side was equally aware that she had never met anyone who interested her so much as Paul. As he went on talking she was sure he must realize how comparatively ignorant she was, yet at the same time she knew how little it mattered; she had wits to match his in the profound escapade which, at first, is every human relationship of consequence. Nor had she been really hurt by his telling her that she didn’t know how to act, because she felt he would have been more polite if he had been less interested in her (though in that she was wrong); and, as the hours progressed till it was time to return to the streets, she passionately wanted to retain his interest, not only for its own sake, but for the strength she already felt she could draw from such a new thing in her life. For she alone knew how events during recent months had strained her nerve, had set up tensions that had kept her sleepless often till dawn, weakening even ambition, so that from the original ‘I want to be a great actress’ that had kept her emotionally alive as a schoolgirl, she had caught herself lately in half-wistful clingings, as if the dream were becoming a prop instead of an urge. But suddenly, talking to Paul, she had felt the urge again.

When he took her hand outside the theatre he said he hoped it wasn’t the last time they would see each other.

“Oh yes, I hope so too. When are you leaving?”

“Don’t know exactly. Depends on how soon I finish the job I’m here for.” He smiled. “Maybe I won’t hurry.”

“Fine. So we really ought to meet again.”

They waited, each for the other; then he said, taking the plunge: “What about tomorrow?”

“Oh dear, there’s a matinée on Saturdays. But you could come for tea at Mona’s afterwards. She has a little flat just round the corner— I always go there between shows on matinée days.”

“Who’s Mona?”

“My best friend. She was Pegeen in the play, if you remember… Can you come?”

There wouldn’t be much time, between the end of a theatre matinée and dinner at Venton League, but he made a note of the address and said he would be there.

* * * * *

All evening and the next morning and afternoon he had the recurrent feeling that to have made such an appointment was a mistake; he wanted to see Carey again, but only alone; to meet her with her friend was pointless, for he so often did not get along with strangers, especially girls, and he had a gloomy foreboding that Mona would prove to be one or another kind of bore. Up to five o’clock he was in mind not to go, but then it began to rain, the soft Irish rain that seemed to caress the air even more than sunshine. The rooms of Venton League darkened as the clouds rolled over, yet only the house was melancholy; the rain tempted one out of doors into a luminous grey cheerfulness. He put on a mackintosh and walked down the drive, relishing the fragrance of lawns and shrubs.