He told his father that he did not want any dinner. John Marsh had enquired about his headache, and Henry had said that it was better, but that he thought he would like to be quiet that evening. He said, too, that he had made up his mind to go for a long, lonely walk. "But what about your dinner?" Mr. Quinn had said, and he had answered that he did not want any. "If I'm hungry," he added, "I can have something before I go to bed."

He felt vaguely irritated with John Marsh who first pestered him ... that was the word Henry used in his mind ... with sympathy and then lamented that his headache would prevent him from helping that evening at the Gaelic language class. "Still, I suppose well manage," he ended regretfully.

"I don't suppose there'll be many at the class," Henry replied almost sneeringly.

"Why?" said Marsh.

"Oh, well," Henry went on, "after last night!..."

"You mean that they think more of dancing than they do of the language?" Marsh interrupted, and there was so much of anxiety in the tone of his voice that Henry regretted that he had sneered at him.

"Well, that's natural," he said, trying to think of some phrase that would mitigate the unkindness of what he was saying, and failing to think of it. "After all, it is much more fun to dance than to learn grammar...."

"But this is the Irish language," Marsh persisted, as if the Irishness of the tongue transcended the drudgery of learning grammar.

Mr. Quinn crumpled the Northern Whig and threw it at Marsh's head. "You an' your oul' language!" he exclaimed. "What good'll it do anybody but a lot of professors. Here's the world tryin' to get Latin an' Greek out of the universities, an' here's you tryin' to get another dead language into them!"

There followed an argument that developed into a wrangle, in the midst of which Henry, flinging a consolatory speech to Marsh, escaped from the house. "You'll get all the keen ones to-night," he said. "That'll be some consolation to you!"

It was too soon to go up to Hamilton's farm. The dairy work would hardly be done, and there would be the evening meal to prepare, and he knew that he would not be welcome in the middle of that activity. He did not wish to return to the room where his father and John Marsh were arguing about the Irish language, nor did he wish to go and sit in his own room until the time came to go and meet Sheila. If Hannah were to make some sandwiches for him, in case he should feel hungry, he would go to the bottom fields and lie in the long grass by the brook until it was time to meet Sheila. He went downstairs to the kitchen and found Hannah busy with the night's dinner.

"Well, Master Henry!" she said.

He told her of his headache and his desire for a solitary walk, and asked her to cut sandwiches for him.

"I will with a heart an' a half," she said, "when I've strained these potatoes. Sit down there a while an' content yourself till I've done...."

He took the sandwiches from her and went off to the bottom fields. The sky was full of mingled colours and long torn clouds that looked like flights of angels, and hidden in the fold of one great white strip of cloud that stretched up into the heavens, the sickle moon shone faintly, waiting for the setting sun to disappear so that she should shine out with unchallenged refulgence. He stood a while to look at the glory of the sky, and munched his sandwiches while he looked. He had always had a sensuous love of fine shapes and looks; the big bare branches of an old tree showing darkly against a winter sky or the changing colour of clouds at sunset, transfused at one moment to the look of filmy gold as the sun sent his rays shining upwards, darkened at the next, when the sun had vanished, so that they had the colour of smoke and made a stain as if God had drawn a sooty thumb across the sky; but now his sensuousness had developed, and he found himself full of admiration for things which hitherto he had not observed. That evening, when the cart-horses were led home, he had suddenly perceived that their great limbs were beautiful. He had stood still in the lane to watch them going by, and had liked the heavy plunging sound of their hoofs on the rough road, and the faded look of the long hair that hung about their houghs; but more than these he had liked the great round limbs of them, so full of strength. He remembered that once at Boveyhayne, Mary Graham and he had argued about the sea-gulls. She had "just loved" them, but he had qualified his admiration. He liked the long, motionless flight of the gulls as they circled through the air, and the whiteness of their shapely bodies and the grey feathers on their backs, but he disliked the small heads they had and the long yellow beaks and the little black eyes and the harsh cry ... and he had almost sickened when he saw them feeding on the entrails that were thrown to them by the fishermen.... But now, since he had fallen in love with Sheila Morgan, it seemed to him that everything in the world was beautiful; and lying here in the long grass, he yielded himself to the loveliness of the earth. He lay back and closed his eyes and listened to the sounds that filled the air, the noise of pleased, tired things at peace and the subdued songs of roosting birds. He could hear shouts from the labourers in the distant hayfields and, now and then, the slow rattle of a country cart as it moved clumsily along the uneven roads that led from the fields to the farmyards. There was a drowsy buzz of insects that mingled oddly with the burble of the stream and the lowing of the cattle.... He lay there and listened to a lark as it flew up from the ground with a queer, agitated flutter of wings, watching it as it ascended high and higher until it became a tiny speck, and then he sat up and watched it as it descended again, still flying with that queer, agitated flutter of wings, until it came near the earth, when its song suddenly ceased and it changed its flight and fell swiftly to its nest.

He rose up from the grass and walked over to the stream and dipped his hands into it, splashing the water on to the grass beside him. The sunlight shone on his hand and made the wet hairs shine like golden threads....