In the excitement of leaving Ballymartin and sightseeing in the shipyard, he had almost forgotten Sheila Morgan, but now, his mind stimulated by his talk with Marsh and his spirit depressed by his loneliness, his thoughts returned to her, and it seemed to him that he detested her. She had insulted him, struck him, humiliated and shamed him. When he remembered that he had told her of his love for her and had asked her to marry him, and had been told in reply that she wanted a man, not a coward, he felt that he could not bear to return to Ireland again. His mood was mingled misery and gladness. At Boveyhayne, thank heaven, he would be free of Sheila and probably he would never think of her again. Gilbert and Ninian would fill his mind, and of course there would be Mrs. Graham and Mary. Mary! It was strange that he should have let Mary slip out of his thoughts and let Sheila slip into them. He had actually proposed to Mary and she had accepted him, and then he had left her and forgotten her because of Sheila. He remembered that he had not replied to the letter she had written to him before John Marsh came to Ballymartin. He had intended to write, but somehow he had not done so ... and then Sheila came, and it was impossible to write to her. He wondered what he should say to her when they met. Would she come to Whitcombe station to meet him? What was he to say to her?...

He had treated her shabbily. Of course, she was only a kid, as Ninian himself would say, but then he had made love to her, and anyhow she would be less of a kid now than she was when he last saw her.... He got tired of walking about the streets, and he made his way to the quays and passed across the gangway on to the deck of the steamer. A cool air was blowing up the Lagan from the Lough, and when he leaned over the side of the ship he could see the dark skeleton shape of the shipyard. His thoughts were extraordinarily confused, rambling about his father and Sheila Morgan and John Marsh and Mary Graham and Tom Arthurs and Ireland and ships and England and Gilbert Farlow and Ninian and Roger....

"I ought never to have thought of any one but Mary," he said to himself at last. "I really love her. I was only ... only passing the time with Sheila!"

"Well, thank God I'll soon be in Devonshire," he went on, "and out of all this. If only my Trinity time were over, and I were settled in London with Gilbert and the others, I'd be happy again!" He thought of John Marsh, and as he leant over the side of the boat, looking down on the dark water flowing beneath him, he seemed to see Marsh's eager face, framed in the window of the railway carriage. He almost heard Marsh saying again, "Well, what do you propose to do for Ireland?..."

"Oh, damn Ireland," he said out loud.

He walked away from the place where he had imagined he had seen Marsh's face peering at him out of the water, and as he walked along the deck, he could hear the noise of hammering in the shipyard made by the men on the night-shift. Tom Arthurs's brain was still working, though Tom Arthurs was now at home.

"That's real work," Henry murmured to himself, "and a lot better than gabbling about Ireland's soul as if it were the only soul in the world! Poor old John! I disappoint him horribly...." He was standing in the bows of the boat, looking towards the Lough. "I wonder," he said to himself, "whether Mary'll be at Whitcombe station!"