The prospect of settling in London in the society of his schoolfriends pleased him. Marsh and Galway had tried to persuade him to make his home in Dublin, pleading that it was the duty of every educated Irishman to live in Ireland. "We haven't got many educated men on our side," Marsh said, "not a hundred in the whole of Ireland, and we need people like you!" They talked of political schemes that must be prepared for the parliament that would some day be re-established in College Green. "And they can only be prepared by educated men," Marsh said.

Henry would not listen to them. His longing was to be with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian in London. Dublin made very little appeal to him, and the job of regenerating Ireland was so immense that it frightened him. "I haven't got a common ground with you people," he said to Marsh and Galway. "You're Catholic to start off with, and I'm like my father, I think the Catholic religion is a contemptible religion. And you're not interested in anything but Ireland and the Gaelic movement. I'm interested in everything!"

"Don't you want to do anything for Ireland then?" John Marsh had asked.

"Oh, yes! I'll vote for Home Rule when I get a vote," he had replied.

"I know what your end will be," Patrick Galway added in a sullen voice. "You'll become a Chelsea Nationalist ... willing to do anything for Ireland but live in it!"

Well, who would want to live in Ireland with its penny-farthing politics! London for him! London and a sense of bigness, of wide ideas and the constant interplay of many minds!

He would talk to his father about Gilbert's proposal. There would be all sorts of subjects to discuss with him, that and the question of an allowance and the question of a career....

The train ran swiftly through the suburbs of Belfast and presently pulled up at the terminus. He descended from his carriage and called a jarvey who drove him across the city to the Northern Counties station where he took train again. It was late that night when he arrived at Ballymartin.