Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door.  The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen.  When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped.  I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her.  I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her.  This happened morning after morning.  I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance.  On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels.  We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land.  These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me:  I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.  Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.  My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom.  I thought little of the future.  I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration.  But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died.  It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house.  Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds.  Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me.  I was thankful that I could see so little.  All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring:  “O love!  O love!” many times.

At last she spoke to me.  When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not know what to answer.  She asked me was I going to Araby.  I forgot whether I answered yes or no.  It would be a splendid bazaar, she said she would love to go.

“And why can’t you?” I asked.

While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist.  She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her convent.  Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their caps and I was alone at the railings.  She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me.  The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing.  It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.