On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are tired and happy. As he crossed O'Connell Bridge, he stood for a few moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had transmuted the river to the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and the sunlight made the houses on the quays look warm and lovely, even though they were old and worn and discoloured. "In her heart," he thought, "Dublin is still a proud lady, although her dress be draggled!"

He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were marching towards Liberty Hall. There were little girls in Gaelic dress at the head of them, accompanied by a pale, tired-looking woman, with tightened lips, who stumped heavily by the side of them; and following them, came young men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry labourers, misshapen by heavy toil and privation ... and as the company passed by, girls stood on the pavement and jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with tightened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed hair....

"They're fools," Henry thought, looking at them as they went wearily on, "but, by God, they're finer than the people who jeer at them. They ... they are serving something ... and these Don't-Care-a-Damners aren't serving anything!..."

There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and said, "Them lads 'ud run like hell if you were to point a penny pop-gun at them! If a peeler was to take their names, they'd be shiverin' with fright. They'd fall out of their trousers with the terror'd be on them!"

Henry did not answer. Indeed, it seemed incredible that there was any fight in them ... if he had been asked for his opinion, he might have said something similar to what this stranger had said to him ... but he hated to hear the man's disparagement, and so he did not make any answer to him.

"I'd rather have them on my side than have him," he thought as he moved away, "with the stink of porter on him!"

It sickened him to see the generosity and the youth walking in the company of the hopelessness of Ireland, training themselves in the means of killing. "If they'd put all that energy and enthusiasm into something that will preserve life and make it deeper and finer, nothing could prevail against them. If only John had more intellect and less emotion ... if Mineely and Connolly were less bitter!"

He walked along Grafton Street, turning phrases over in his mind, angry phrases, bitter things that he would say to John Marsh when he met him.

"What have young lads and girls to do with Hate and Death?" he said to himself, as if he were talking to Marsh. "You're perverting them from their purpose! You're robbing God of His due ... of the hope that fills His Heart with each generation!"

"But it's no good talking to him ... he's too fond of spilling over. If he were like Yeats, content to love Ireland at a distance ... to 'arise and go now' no further than the Euston Road ... he might achieve something, and at all events, he'd be harmless!"

He turned out of Grafton Street into Stephen's Green.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to Fairyhouse!"

And then he went to his Club. He was tired and sleepy, and soon after supper, he went to bed.