Page 273 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

bethans, a sad and sweet loth to depart, the victory chant
of Agincourt, the happy air of Greensleeves. While he sang
and she listened, or feigned to listen, his heart was at rest but
when the quaint old songs had ended and he heard again
the voices in the room he remembered his own sarcasm: the
house where young men are called by their christian names
a little too soon.
At certain instants her eyes seemed about to trust him
but he had waited in vain. She passed now dancing lightly
across his memory as she had been that night at the carnival
ball, her white dress a little lifted, a white spray nodding in
her hair. She danced lightly in the round. She was dancing
towards him and, as she came, her eyes were a little averted
and a faint glow was on her cheek. At the pause in the chain
of hands her hand had lain in his an instant, a soft mer-
chandise.
—You are a great stranger now.
—Yes. I was born to be a monk.
—I am afraid you are a heretic.
—Are you much afraid?
For answer she had danced away from him along the
chain of hands, dancing lightly and discreetly, giving her-
self to none. The white spray nodded to her dancing and
when she was in shadow the glow was deeper on her cheek.
A monk! His own image started forth a profaner of the
cloister, a heretic franciscan, willing and willing not to
serve, spinning like Gherardino da Borgo San Donnino, a
lithe web of sophistry and whispering in her ear.
No, it was not his image. It was like the image of the

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