ned s you have a deal to learn she said and they lingered by the gate talking of the revival of the language and how the people would find new inspiration in it maintaining that if ireland had not yet achieved any great literary work it was not because the race was not literary but because it had unfortunately been looking for a long while towards an alien literature he accompanied her to her gate and just as she was about to bid him good bye she begged him to come to supper next sunday and he returned home thinking of her eyes her hair and all her person which so far as he could judge it under her dress seemed well chap iii it was nearly midnight and he lingered in the avenue listening to a in the meadows � a bird it seemed to him in the dusky with a round moon hanging above a line of distant trees a dog in the village and ned remembered that mrs had told him that � mrs s parlour maid � looked upon it as a great treat to be allowed to sleep at home he had learnt from her that eight or nine lived in the cabin two or three sleeping in each bed and they were all sleeping now huddled together he suspected that it was the mystery of the silent night that had caused his thoughts to stray to these lowly lives huddled in sleep yonder at the turn of the road he could just distinguish up in the sky the roll of the mountains dim and grey and he asked himself if he would like to live in this queer empty country accepting its destiny as part of his destiny the last remnant of barbarous europe out notwithstanding all might say to the contrary she was a pretty girl and an interesting girl and he had not discovered a single in her except perhaps her love of music for she didn t like music she only said she did to please him her attempt to accompany him was most unfortunate he hadn t been able to go on and the big girl who had taken s place at the piano hadn t succeeded much better had no doubt been at great pains to learn a little music but one cannot learn music and to rid himself of the memory of his he felt he would like to play something in this avenue under the elm trees � something of s it seemed to him that he had never played so well and on turning his head he saw what he had never seen before � a rainbow i like playing to the moon a much better audience than yonder even the silence seems grey he added everything is hushed mountains and meadows everything except that noisy again he began to think of the lowly lives huddled in sleep in the village and the glimmering panes in the square house under the mountains reminded him that behind one of those windows was probably letting down her red he wished he were with her in a way and began to wonder if he were moving towards some destiny for if he were not why had he come into this queer country among these queer people was it chance that had brought him here or was it that he was going to marry this pretty girl it takes two to make a marriage but ned did not doubt that he would be able to marry if he were so minded and fell to thinking what kind of a wife she would make and if he could love a woman who didn t care for music but it may have been because i was by her she was nervous on another occasion she may play better or is it that she has never lived with musical people a few weeks later he was glad to escape from her music and walk with her under the trees that about the house the rambling airs bore a delicious sweetness and while listening to who was talking about her life in the lonely he wondered whence the sweetness came but did not dare to interrupt her and they passed out of the wood towards the garden the sweetness becoming more intense every minute at last he saw it � a great large as a house covered with white blossoms ah the is it you or the that fills the night with fragrance she raised her eyes in gratitude and the scent became so that they walked into the wood again a seat appeared under a tree and side by side they sat looking at the on the moon the moonlight had taken the out of s eyes and a great deal of the red out of her hair but her hands drooped prettily as they moved along her fan and her face was pointed and pretty and her voice musical and her intense faith in ireland s destiny seemed to have awakened a response in him he believed while he was with her that perhaps the twentieth century would reveal to the world ireland s personality and that the race would pass out of a pastoral into an artistic period and perhaps find a great literary period too now that ireland had returned to her own language perhaps all she says is true about ireland ned muttered to himself as he pursued his way down the long avenue and he began to wonder if he could do as these people of ireland as if she had an independent existence apart from the people in it that was criticism and he would try to put criticism behind him and yield himself to ireland and her language which he had promised to learn � a promise given after seeing for the third time she had however promised to teach him and on the morrow he 