Barbara grimaced half angrily. 'I don't believe he was ever in love with Lady Bland, or you either.'

Mr Macarthy shook his head gravely. 'That will avail you nothing so long as Lady Bland believes it; if you can persuade her of it, he might be released, as they say of the cinematograph films, and then who knows, my dear Barbara, what might happen?'

Barbara burst into a merry laugh. 'I know one thing that would not happen,' said she: 'Mr Tinkler would never ask me to marry him.' Adam knew not whether to be angry or pleased at this suggested remissness of Mr Tinkler.

'No,' said Mr Macarthy, 'to do Tinkler justice, he has too much respect for you to do that.'

Barbara frowned. 'Do you think he would marry Lady Bland if she were free?'

'To do Lady Bland justice,' said Mr Macarthy, 'she has too much respect for herself to do that.'

Miss Burns's eyes filled with puzzlement. 'To do what?'

'To be free to marry Tinkler.'

'What can you mean?' Miss Burns dropped her voice. 'Surely he's better than her husband?

Mr Macarthy nodded portentously. 'Far better.

But Sir Adolphus has the great advantage of being a man, and the hour he dies he will become, in Lady Bland's estimation, an angel. She will entirely forget that he was a drunken bully once that he is no longer there to bully her and get drunk, whereas Tinkler's nothingness will be always before her eyes. It's quite a mistake to suppose that a living jackass has any advantage over a dead hyena: though when both are alive the jackass may seem the less trying company. It is the strong and not the virtuous personality that conquers death. Hundreds of people went into hysterics over Parnell when he was dead who wished to see him hanged when he was alive.' He broke off. 'You probably know that poem, if one

may stretch a point and call it so, of your grandfather, Byron-Quinn?'

Barbara broke in excitedly: 'If you mean "The Dead Lover," I set it to a sort of tune of my own the other day. Would you like me to sing it to you?'

Mr Macarthy shrugged his shoulders: 'If you remember the words,' and turned carelessly away.

'Don't be horrid,' Miss Burns pouted: 'Of course I remember the words . . . At least, I think I remember the last verse,' and in her deep, moving, almost manly little voice she sang:

So far Adam heard and no further; for, listlessly turning the scrap of paper on which was printed Mr Marcus Pim's appreciation of Barbara Burns as the Third Eavesdropper in Mr Tinkler's tragedy of 'Deirdre,' he read:

'BRADY: At II Spring Avenue, Summer Hill, on the 7th instant, of a chill contracted on Bank Holiday, Caroline Moira, youngest and only surviving daughter of Alexander Brady, Esq., of the Connacht and Leinster Bank. R.I.P.'

Chapter Thirty-Four

MR MACARTHY ON CAROLINE

ADAM lay very still in bed, clutching that tragi-comic scrap of paper in his fingers: he heard the voices of Barbara Burns and his guardian close at hand languidly discussing death and love: at least she was talking of love surviving death, and he was laughing at her. She was saying: 'I know positively that a woman's love for a man will survive the worst humiliation he can put upon her. He may be cruel enough to kill her, yet she will go on loving him.'

And Mr Macarthy: 'Has a man been cruel enough to kill you?'

Then Barbara: 'I don't exactly mean that.' Again Mr Macarthy: 'Has he killed any of your friends?'

And Barbara: 'You know I don't mean that.' And Mr Macarthy: 'Then how and what do you really know?'

And then Miss Burns rather plaintively: 'From my inner consciousness I know that a woman's love for a man will survive anything.'

'A Tabby cat's love for a Tom will survive anything,' said Mr Macarthy, 'so long as nobody drowns the kittens.'

'I don't think that that was at all a nice thing for you to say to me,' said Miss Burns with pursed lips. 'It's not the sort of idea that occurs to Tinkler,' Mr Macarthy confessed, 'but if it did Lady Bland would be as annoyed with him as you are with me.'

Miss Burns was softened. 'I'm never annoyed with you, but I don't think that you treat me at all nicely.'

'If you don't think that I treat you nicely,' said Mr Macarthy gravely, 'I think you ought to cut me.' Miss Burns made a dramatic gesture. 'Why do you always mistake me?' she cried.

'It is sometimes more convenient,' he answered blandly whereupon she dashed into the other room, where Adam thought he could hear her sobbing: but on Mr Macarthy following there was laughter, and he could hear his guardian say: 'It is time for you to go home; would you prefer a car or cab?'

Adam heard her say that she would walk and his guardian answer: You will not.' Still arguing the point she went off with Mr Macarthy, leaving Adam without a farewell and the newspaper cutting still in his hand. His soul was torn with conflicting emotions; for he was cut to the quick by Barbara going off with his guardian, oblivious of himself: shocked with himself for being again jealous of his guardian: and all the while wondering at himself for being alive when Caroline Brady lay dead.

And it was he who had done her to death, or at least been a partner to her self foredoing. He thought he saw death laughing at him from the foot of the bed. . . . Love and Death. Of these things Barbara and his guardian had been talking beside his bed while he had been knowing Love and Death, walking with them hand in hand.. What did those others know of Love and Death? Barbara certainly nothing. . His guardian? His guardian knew everything. Did he know about him and Caroline, Caroline who was lying to-night for the first time in her grave at Glansevin. How long would she lie there? How long do bodies last? Hamlet asked that question of the grave-digger in the play; the play... Barbara Burns was acting in a play, pretending to die perhaps, while Caroline was really dying last Thursday. . . . And to-day he was making love to Barbara as he had never made love to Caroline.

And Caroline lying in her grave, whom four days.ago he had loved as he would never love Barbara. Caroline's body was lying in her grave stiller than he lay now in his bed. . . . God! God! The coldness of lying there in a coffin six feet deep in the clay of dreary Glasnevin. . . . What nonsense he was talking. Poor Caroline was lying there dead and senseless as an old cat on a dust-heap beside the canal. . . . Beside the canal. . . . Dead as a cat whose kittens were drowned or a deader cat that had borne no kittens. . . . Why had poor Caroline been ever alive? Why, being alive, had she for many moments, unforgettable moments, controlled every impulse of his soul...? Of his soul, what of her own soul? What of the soul that had left three days ago the body of Caroline Brady, the body in whose arms he had lain last Monday on the canal bank, and to-day had passed over the canal bank to lie to-night for the first time in the grave at Glasnevin? Was the soul of Caroline still with her body, battling with her coffin lid to break forth to him...? Or was it flinging itself through a wave of endless fire against the gates of hell? ... Was it perhaps calling to him to come to her there if he loved her?

A sweat burst forth all over him: he shook with something that was fear and still more rage. With a spasm he plunged out of bed and knelt on the floor, as once he had knelt on the floor of the Mater Misericordiæ Hospital, to pray for the soul of Emily Robinson, but in far other mood.

'God!' he cried, 'God! I cannot see that she and I have sinned against any person or any thing. But if it pleases You to say we have sinned, then let the punishment of both be mine, for I can better bear punishment than she. But I cannot bear that she should be punished because of me.' He raised his voice: 'Come, oh God! strike me now. I'm not a bit afraid when I think of her.' Then his voice quavered