You haven’t given yourself a very good character, coming here, my man; but you might have done worse.  Anyway, you’ve washed your hands of it now.  Don’t do things like that again.

MAN.  No, sir.

(And as he stands hesitating, Parnell opens the door.)

Thank you, sir.

(The man goes.  Parnell closes the door after him, comes meditatively across, and sits down.  There is a long pause)

KATHARINE.  What are you—­thinking?

PARNELL.  A year ago! ...  If he had come to me with that a year ago—­what should I have done?

KATHARINE.  You would have done just the same.

PARNELL.  Torn it up?  And put it in the fire?—­I’m not so sure.

KATHARINE.  But I am.  Hadn’t he the same right as I had, to live his own life?

PARNELL.  My dear, I said “a year ago.”  That means before the case came on.  That would have stopped it—­for good....  If I had had it—­I might have been tempted.

(Watching him, she sees him smile.)

KATHARINE (rather tremulously).  Are you glad—­that you didn’t have it?

PARNELL.  And use it?  Yes:  I am—­glad!

KATHARINE (throwing herself into his arms).  Oh, my dear!  Why, that means everything.  You’re glad!  You’re glad!

PARNELL (clasping her).  Oh, my own love, my own dear sweet!

KATHARINE.  You regret—­nothing?

PARNELL.  Nothing.  Haven’t I made you sure of that—­yet?

KATHARINE.  Oh, my King!—­my King!

(And just then the paper in the grate kindling into flame, he points to it.)

PARNELL.  Look! there goes—­our proof.

KATHARINE.  It doesn’t matter.

PARNELL.  It never did.

KATHARINE.  That’s what I mean.

PARNELL.  But, politically, it might have made a world of difference.

KATHARINE.  Yes—­to the world; not to us.  We wanted to be as we are, didn’t we?

PARNELL.  As we are, and as we were—­how long is it?—­eleven years ago.  There’s been no change since.  When I go back to my star, I shall have found what I came for.  That’s what matters most.  Souls either find or lose themselves—­live or die.  I lived:  I shouldn’t have done, on this earth, but for you—­but for you.

(There is a pause.  He sits meditating.)

KATHARINE.  And of what—­now?

PARNELL.  The next generation—­possibly the next but one:  you and I gone, and Ireland free.  In this last year we may have done more for that—­than we could ever have planned.  We’ve given them a bone to bite on:  and there’s meat on it—­real meat.  And because of that, they call you my ruin, eh?  I look rather like one, I suppose, just now.  But as I came home to-night, all my mind was filled with you; and I knew that to me you were worth far more than all the rest.  And then suddenly I thought—­what am I worth to you?