He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was playing again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar and while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart.  The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep octave in the bass.  Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room.  The most vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had gone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had come back when the piano had stopped.

Lancers were arranged.  Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors.  She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and prominent brown eyes.  She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish device and motto.

When they had taken their places she said abruptly: 

“I have a crow to pluck with you.”

“With me?” said Gabriel.

She nodded her head gravely.

“What is it?” asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.

“Who is G. C.?” answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.

Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not understand, when she said bluntly: 

“O, innocent Amy!  I have found out that you write for The Daily Express.  Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Why should I be ashamed of myself?” asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying to smile.

“Well, I’m ashamed of you,” said Miss Ivors frankly.  “To say you’d write for a paper like that.  I didn’t think you were a West Briton.”

A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel’s face.  It was true that he wrote a literary column every Wednesday in The Daily Express, for which he was paid fifteen shillings.  But that did not make him a West Briton surely.  The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque.  He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books.  Nearly every day when his teaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand booksellers, to Hickey’s on Bachelor’s Walk, to Web’s or Massey’s on Aston’s Quay, or to O’Clohissey’s in the bystreet.  He did not know how to meet her charge.  He wanted to say that literature was above politics.  But they were friends of many years’ standing and their careers had been parallel, first at the University and then as teachers:  he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her.  He continued blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books.

When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and inattentive.  Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said in a soft friendly tone: 

“Of course, I was only joking.  Come, we cross now.”