In the morning, Ninian and Roger rose early, for Ninian was going to Southampton to see the Gigantic start on her maiden voyage to America, and Roger had a case at a county court outside London. In a vague way, Ninian had intended to talk to Roger about his engagement, to reason with him, as he put it. Gilbert had pointed out that the chief employment of women is to disrupt the friendships of men. "Men," he had said to Ninian and Henry after Roger had gone to bed, "take years to make up a friendship, and then a female comes along and busts it up in a couple of weeks!" Ninian did not intend to let Miss Rachel Wynne break up their friendship, and he planned a long, comprehensive and settling conversation with Roger on the subject of females generally and of Rachel Wynne particularly. In bed, he had invented an extraordinarily convincing argument, before which Roger must collapse, but by the time he had finished shaving, the argument had vanished from his mind, and his convincing speech shrivelled into a halting, "I say, Roger, old chap, it's a bit thick, you know!" and even that ceased to exist when he saw Roger, with the Times propped against the sugar bowl, eating bacon and eggs as easily as if he had never betrothed himself to any woman.

"Hilloa, Roger!" said Ninian, sitting down at the table, and reaching for the toast.

"Hilloa, Ninian!" Roger murmured, without looking up.

Magnolia entered with Ninian's breakfast and placed it before him.

"Anything in the Times?" Ninian said, pouring out coffee.

"Usual stuff. The bacon's salt!..."

The time, Ninian thought, was hardly suitable for a few home-thrusting words on the subject of marriage, so he reminded Roger that he was going to Southampton.

"Tom Arthurs has promised to show me over as much of the Gigantic as we can manage in a couple of hours. That won't be as much as I'd like to see, but I'll try and go over her when she comes back from New York. Any mustard about?"

"You'll be back again to-night, I suppose?"

"Probably. You're right ... this bacon is salt, damn it!"

Roger rose from the table and moved to the window where he stood for a while looking out on the garden. It seemed to Ninian that in a moment or two he would speak of his engagement, and so he sat still, waiting for him to begin.

"Well," said Roger, turning away from the window and feeling for his watch, "I must be off. So long, Ninian!"

He went out of the room quickly and in a little while, Ninian heard the street door banging behind him.

"Damn," he said to himself, "I've just remembered what I was going to say to him!"

He had finished his breakfast and left the house before Gilbert and Henry came down from their rooms. Henry was too tired to talk much, and Gilbert, finding him uncommunicative, made no effort to make conversation. He picked up the Times and contented himself with the morning's news, while Henry read a letter from John Marsh which had come by the first post.

"I'm interested in your Improved Tories," he wrote, "I think the scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits on other people's, and you keep in touch with all kinds of opinions. That's excellent! Your father, and you, too, used to say we were rather one-eyed in Dublin, and I think there's a good deal of truth in that, so I'm trying to get a group of people in Dublin to form a society somewhat similar to your Improved Tories. Did you ever meet a man called Arthur Griffiths when you were here? He is a very able, but not very sociable, man, and so people do not know him as well as they ought to ... and his tongue is like a flail ... so that most of the people who do know him, don't like him. The Nationalist M. P.'s detest him. Well, several years ago he founded a society which he called the Sinn Fein Movement, and the principle of the thing is excellent up to a point. Do you remember any of your Gaelic? Sinn Fein means 'we ourselves,' and that is the principle of the society. The object is to induce Irishmen to do for themselves, things that are done for them by Englishmen. It ought to appeal to your father. Griffiths got the idea, I think, from Hungary. We're to withdraw our representatives from the English parliament and start an Irish Government on the basis of a Grand Council of the County Councils. We're to have our own consular service, our own National Bank and Stock Exchange and Civil Service, and a mercantile marine so that we can trade direct with other countries. And we're to nationalise the railways and canals and bogs (which are to be reclaimed) and take over insurance and education and so forth. All this is to be done by the General Council of the County Councils in opposition to anything of the sort that is done by the English Government in preparation for the day when there is an Irish Government when, of course, the General Council will be merged in the Government. Oh, and we're to have Protection, too! It seems rather a lot, doesn't it? but the idea is excellent and, if modified considerably, fairly practical. Griffiths has antiquated notions of economics, however, and some of the things he says prevent me from joining him. His great idea is to attract capital to Ireland by telling capitalists how cheap Irish labour is. That seems to me to be an abominable proposal, likely to lead to something worse than Wigan and all those miserable English towns your father dislikes so heartily. And probably, of all his proposals, it is the most likely to succeed. That's why I'm opposed to him at present. I cannot bear the thought of seeing England duplicated in Ireland. But the scheme has merit, and Galway and I are plotting to capture the movement from Griffiths. We think that if we could graft the Sinn Fein on to the Gaelic League, we'd be on the way to establishing Irish independence. Our people are becoming very materialistic, and we must quicken their spirits again somehow. Douglas Hyde is the trouble, of course. He wants to keep the Gaelic League clear of politics. As if you can possibly keep politics out of anything in Ireland! We want to make every Gaelic Leaguer a conscious rebel against English beliefs and English habits. I wish you'd come over and join us. It'll be very hard, but exhilarating, work. You've no notion of how sordid and money-grubbing and English the mass of our people are becoming. It's a man's job to destroy that spirit and revive the old, careless, generous, God-loving Irish one...."

"Still harping on that old nationality," Henry thought to himself, when he had finished reading the letter.

He was in no mood for thoughts on Ireland. His mind was still full of the idea that had come into his head the previous night. Why should he not get married? The idea attracted and repelled him. It would, he thought, be very pleasant to live with ... with Mary, say ... to love her and be loved by her ... very pleasant ... but one would have to accept responsibilities, and there would probably be children. He would dislike having to leave Ninian and Roger and Gilbert, particularly Gilbert, and his share in the meetings of the Improved Tories would begin to dwindle. On the other hand, there would be Mary ... If he were to lose his friends and the careless, cultured life they led in the Bloomsbury house, he would gain Mary, and perhaps she would more than compensate for them....

Gilbert interrupted his thoughts.

"Rum go, this about Roger, isn't it?" he said.

Henry nodded his head. "I hadn't any idea of it," he replied. "I'd never even heard of her until he said she was coming to dinner!"

"I had," Gilbert said, "but I didn't think he was going to let the life force catch hold of him. Close chap, Roger! He never gives himself away ... and that's the sort that's most romantic. You and I are obviously sloppy, Quinny, but somehow we miss all the messes that reticent, close chaps like Roger fall into. You don't much like her, do you?"

"Well, I'm not what you might call smitten by her, but that's because she seems to think I'm wasting time in writing novels. She's too strenuous for me. I like women who relax sometimes. She'll orate to him every night, just as she orated to us, about people's wrongs...."

"Mind, she's clever!" said Gilbert.

"Oh, I don't deny that. That's part of my case against her. Really and truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women?"

"Really and truly, Quinny, I don't. Perhaps that's not the way to put it. I like talking to clever women, but I shouldn't like to marry one of them. I'm clever myself, and perhaps that's why. There isn't room for more than one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man should marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. You can argue with clever women, but you can't kiss them or flirt with them. All the clever ones I've ever known have had something hard in them ... like a lump of steel. Men aren't like that! They can be hard, of course, but they aren't always exhibiting their hardness. Clever women are."

Henry tossed Marsh's letter across the table to Gilbert.

"Read that," he said, "while I look through the Times!"

They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the armchairs on either side of the fireplace.

"You know, Quinny," said Gilbert, as he took Marsh's letter out of its envelope, "I often think we're awfully young, all of us!"

"Young?"

"Yes. Immature ... and all that. We're frightfully clever, of course, but really we don't know much, and yet you're writing books and I'm writing plays and Ninian's building Tunnels and Roger's playing ducks and drakes with the law ... and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, I wish Roger hadn't got engaged. That sort of thing makes a man think!"

He read Marsh's letter and then passed it back to Henry.

"Seems all right," he said. "It's a pity those Irish fellows haven't got a wider outlook. Sitting there fussing over their mouldy island when there's the whole world to fuss over! I must be off soon. There's a rehearsal of my play this morning...."

"I say, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, "do you think I ought to go and join this Irish Renascence business?"

"How can I tell? It probably won't amount to much. I should take an intelligent interest in it, if I were you. Perhaps you can induce Marsh to come over and talk to the Improved Tories about it. What are you doing this morning?"

"Oh, working!"

"Well, so long!"

"So long, Gilbert. You'll be back to lunch, I suppose?"

"I don't think so. The rehearsals are very long now. You see, the play's to be done on Wednesday...."