“So I was.  So I am.  But not at this minute.  My grandmother was a hard Ulster woman and I hated her.  But I wouldn’t be a thorn in my grandmother’s side if the old lady was assaulted by a brutal voluptuary, and I saw her down and fighting for her honour.

“I’ve been a thorn in England’s side all my life.  But it’s nothing to the thorn I’ll be if I’m killed fighting for her.”

“Why—­why—­if you want to fight in the civil war afterwards?”

“Why?  Because I’m one of the few Irishmen who can reason straight.  I was going into the civil war last year because it was a fight for freedom.  I’m going into this War this year because it’s a bigger fight for a bigger freedom.

“You can’t have a free Ireland without a free England, any more than you can have religious liberty without political liberty.  If the Orangemen understood anything at all about it they’d see it was the Nationalists and the Sinn Feiners that’ll help them to put down Catholicism in Ireland.”

“You think it matters to Ireland whether Germany licks us or we lick Germany?”

“I think it matters to the whole world.”

“What’s changed you?” said Michael.

He was angry with Lawrence.  He thought:  “He hasn’t any excuse for failing us.  He hasn’t been conscripted.”

“Nothing’s changed me.  But supposing it didn’t matter to the whole world, or even to Europe, and supposing the Allies were beaten in the end, you and I shouldn’t be beaten, once we’d stripped ourselves, stripped our souls clean, and gone in.

“Victory, Michael—­victory is a state of mind.”

* * * * *

The opportunist had seen his supreme opportunity.

He would have snatched at it in the first week of the War, as he had said, but that Vera had made it hard for him.  She was not making it easy now.  The dull, dark moth’s wings of her eyes hovered about him, fluttering with anxiety.

When she heard that he was going to enlist she sent for Veronica.

Veronica said, “You must let him go.”

“I can’t let him go.  And why should I?  He’ll do no good.  He’s over age.  He’s no more fit than I am.”

“You’ll have to, sooner or later.”

“Later, then.  Not one minute before I must.  If they want him let them come and take him.”

“It won’t hurt so much if you let him go, gently, now.  He’ll tear at you if you keep him.”

“He has torn at me.  He tears at me every day.  I don’t mind his tearing.  I mind his going—­going and getting killed, wounded, paralysed, broken to pieces.”

“You’ll mind his hating you.  You’ll mind that awfully.”

“I shan’t.  He’s hated me before.  He went away and left me once.  But he came back.  He can’t really do without me.”

“You don’t know how he’ll hate you if you come between him and what he wants most.”

“I used to be what he wanted most.”