Page 269 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

—Do you mean to say it is better to have a job here in the
country than in a rich city like that? I know a fellow...
—Hynes has no brains. He got through by stewing, pure
stewing.
—Don’t mind him. There’s plenty of money to be made
in a big commercial city.
—Depends on the practice.
—EGO CREDO UT VITA PAUPERUM EST SIMPLIC-
ITER ATROX, SIMPLICITER SANGUINARIUS ATROX,
IN LIVERPOOLIO.
Their voices reached his ears as if from a distance in in-
terrupted pulsation. She was preparing to go away with her
companions.
The quick light shower had drawn off, tarrying in clus-
ters of diamonds among the shrubs of the quadrangle where
an exhalation was breathed forth by the blackened earth.
Their trim boots prattled as they stood on the steps of the
colonnade, talking quietly and gaily, glancing at the clouds,
holding their umbrellas at cunning angles against the few
last raindrops, closing them again, holding their skirts de-
murely.
And if he had judged her harshly? If her life were a simple
rosary of hours, her life simple and strange as a bird’s life,
gay in the morning, restless all day, tired at sundown? Her
heart simple and wilful as a bird’s heart?
*****
Towards dawn he awoke. O what sweet music! His soul
was all dewy wet. Over his limbs in sleep pale cool waves
of light had passed. He lay still, as if his soul lay amid cool

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