“I may not come back at all.  So I want you to take over the Review for me.  Ellis and my secretary will show you how it stands.  You’ll know what to do.  I can trust you not to let it down.”

“He doesn’t mean what he says, Michael.  He’s only saying it to frighten me.  He’s been holding it over me for years.

“Say you’ll have nothing to do with it. Say you won’t touch his old Review.”

“Could I go to Ireland for you?”

“You couldn’t.”

“Why not?  What do you think you’re going to do there?”

“I’m going to pull the Nationalists together, so that if there’s civil war in Ireland, the Irish will have a chance to win.  Thank God for Carson!  He’s given us the opportunity we wanted.”

“Tell him he’s not to go, Michael.  He won’t listen to me, but he’ll mind what you say.”

“I want to go instead of him.”

“You can’t go instead of me.  Nobody can go instead of me.”

“I can go with you.”

“You can’t.”

“Larry, if you take Michael to Ireland, Anthony and Frances will never forgive you. I’ll never forgive you.”

“I’m not taking Michael to Ireland, I’m telling you.  There’s no reason why Michael should go to Ireland at all.  It isn’t his country.”

“You needn’t rub that in,” said Michael.

“It isn’t yours,” said Vera.  “Ireland doesn’t want you.  The Nationalists don’t want you.  You said yourself they’ve turned you out of Ireland.  When you’ve lived in England all these years why should you go back to a place that doesn’t want you?”

“Because if Carson gets a free hand I see some chance of Ireland being a free country.”

Vera wailed and entreated.  She said it showed how much he cared for her.  It showed that he was tired of her.  Why couldn’t he say so and have done with it?

“It’s not,” she said, “as if you could really do anything.  You’re a dreamer.  Ireland has had enough of dreamers.”  And Stephen’s eyes looked over her head, into the high branches of the tree of Heaven, as if he saw his dream shining clear through them like a moon.

The opportunist could see nothing but his sublime opportunity.

Michael went back with him to dine and talk it over.  There was to be civil war in Ireland then?

He thought:  If only Lawrence would let him go with him.  He wanted to go to Ireland.  To join the Nationalists and fight for Ireland, fight for the freedom he was always dreaming about—­that would be a fine thing.  It would be a finer thing than writing poems about Ireland.

Lawrence Stephen went soberly and steadily through the affair of the Review, explaining things to Michael.  He wanted this done, and this.  And over and over again Michael’s voice broke through his instructions.  Why couldn’t he go to Ireland instead of Lawrence?  Or, if Lawrence wouldn’t let him go instead of him, he might at least take him with him.  He didn’t want to stay at home editing the Review.  Ellis or Mitchell or Monier-Owen would edit it better than he could.  Even the wretched Wadham would edit it just as well.  He wanted to go to Ireland and fight.