But Lawrence wouldn’t let him go.  He wasn’t going to have the boy’s blood on his hands.  His genius and his youth were too precious.

Besides, Ireland was not his country.

* * * * *

It was past ten o’clock.  Frances was alone in the drawing-room.  She sat by the open window and waited and watched.

The quiet garden lay open to her sight.  Only the inner end of the farther terrace, under the orchard wall, was hidden by a high screen of privet.

It seemed hours to Frances since she had seen Nicky and Veronica go down the lawn on to the terrace.

And then Anthony had gone out too.  She was vexed with Anthony.  She could see him sitting under his ash-tree, her tree of heaven; his white shirt-front gave out an oblong gleam like phosphorous in the darkness under the tree.  She was watching to see that he didn’t get up and go on to the terrace.  Anthony had no business in the garden at all.  He was catching cold in it.  He had sneezed twice.  She wanted Nicholas and Veronica to have the garden to themselves to-night, and the perfect stillness of the twilight to themselves, every tree and every little leaf and flower keeping quiet for them; and there was Anthony sneezing.

She was restless and impatient, as if she carried the burden of their passion in her own heart.

Presently she could bear it no longer.  She got up and called to Anthony to come in.  He came obediently.  “What are you thinking of,” she said, “planting yourself out there and sneezing?  I could see your shirt-front a mile off.  It’s indecent of you.”

“Why indecent?”

“Because Nicky and Veronica are out there.”

“I don’t see them.”

“Do you suppose they want you to see them?”

She turned the electric light on full, to make darkness of their twilight out there.

* * * * *

Nicky and Veronica talked together in the twilight, sitting on the seat under the orchard well behind the privet screen.  They did not see Anthony sitting under the ash-tree, they did not hear him, they did not hear Frances calling to him to come in.  They were utterly unaware of Frances and Anthony.

“Ronny,” he said, “did Michael say anything to you?”

“When?”

“This afternoon, when he made you come with him here?”

“How do you mean, ’say anything’?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Mick?”

“Yes.  Did he ask you to marry him?”

“No.  He said a lot of funny things, but he didn’t say that.  He wouldn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because—­he just wouldn’t.”

“Well, he says he understands you.”

“Then,” said Veronica conclusively, “of course he wouldn’t.”

“Yes; but he says I don’t.”

“Dear Nicky, you understand me when nobody else does.  You always did.”