In a comfortably furnished sitting-room, with windows looking upon the sea-parade, a Woman of distinguished beauty sits reading beside the fire, so intently occupied that she pays no heed to the entry of the Servant, who unobtrusively lights the gas, draws down the blinds, and closes the curtains.  Then taking up a tea-tray, served for two, she retires, and the reader is left alone.  But not for long.  The slam of the street-door causes an attention which the coming and going of the Servant has failed to arouse; and now, as the door opens, the brightened interest of her face tells that, without seeing, she knows who is there.  Quietly, almost furtively, she lets fall the paper she has been reading, and turns to her husband eyes of serene welcome, meeting confidently the sharp interrogation of his glance.

PARNELL.  What are you doing?

KATHARINE.  I was reading.

PARNELL.  Yes?  What?

KATHARINE.  Those papers you just brought in.

PARNELL.  And I told you not to.

KATHARINE (smiling).  I was wilful and disobeyed.

PARNELL (picking up the paper, and looking at it with contemptuous disgust).  Why did you?

KATHARINE.  Isn’t “wilful” a sufficient answer, my dear?

(And with a covert look of amusement she watches him tear and throw the paper into the fire.)

Why do you try to make me a coward?  You aren’t one yourself.

PARNELL.  That gutter-stuff! (And the second paper joins its fellow in the flames.)

KATHARINE.  Now wasn’t that just a bit unnecessary?  After all, they are helping to make history.  That is public opinion—­the voice of the people, you know.

PARNELL.  Not our people!

KATHARINE.  Oh?  Have you brought back any better news—­from there?

PARNELL.  Nothing special.  The result of the election was out.

KATHARINE.  You didn’t wire it.  How much were we to the bad?

PARNELL.  A few hundred.  What does more or less matter?  It’s—­it’s the priests who are winning now.

KATHARINE.  With divided congregations as the result.

PARNELL.  Yes.  But I’d rather they won than the politicians.  They are honest, at any rate.  Poor fools!

KATHARINE.  So it’s the real country we are seeing now?

PARNELL.  Yes.  That’s the material I’ve had to work with!

KATHARINE.  Wonderful—­considering.

PARNELL.  And now—­now one gets to the root!  But I always knew it.

KATHARINE.  So you are not disappointed?

PARNELL.  No; only defeated.  Yet I did think once that I was going to win.

KATHARINE.  So you will.

PARNELL.  When I’m dead, no doubt ... some day.  You can’t fight for a winning cause, and not know that.

KATHARINE.  But you are not going to die yet, dearest.

PARNELL (with a deep sigh of dejection).  Oh!  Wifie, I’m so tired, so tired!