Page 83 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what
her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that
in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard
their tale before. He saw her urge her vanities, her fine dress
and sash and long black stockings, and knew that he had
yielded to them a thousand times. Yet a voice within him
spoke above the noise of his dancing heart, asking him
would he take her gift to which he had only to stretch out his
hand. And he remembered the day when he and Eileen had
stood looking into the hotel grounds, watching the waiters
running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and the fox ter-
rier scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn and how, all
of a sudden, she had broken out into a peal of laughter and
had run down the sloping curve of the path. Now, as then,
he stood listlessly in his place, seemingly a tranquil watcher
of the scene before him.
—She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought.
That’s why she came with me to the tram. I could easily
catch hold of her when she comes up to my step: nobody is
looking. I could hold her and kiss her.
But he did neither: and, when he was sitting alone in
the deserted tram, he tore his ticket into shreds and stared
gloomily at the corrugated footboard.
*****
The next day he sat at his table in the bare upper room
for many hours. Before him lay a new pen, a new bottle of
ink and a new emerald exercise. From force of habit he had
written at the top of the first page the initial letters of the je-
suit motto: A.M.D.G. On the first line of the page appeared

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