"
"But your marriage was a love marriage?"
"Yes, but that is a long time ago. It is four years ago."
"I don't think your husband will separate himself from you, but
even so I think--"
"You will give me absolution?"
She said this a little defiantly, and the priest wondered, and she
left the confessional perplexed and a little ashamed and very much
terrified.
There was nothing for her to do in Dublin, she must go home and
wait for her husband. He was not coming home until evening, and
she rode home wondering how the day would pass, thinking the best
time to tell him would be after dinner when he left the piano. If
he were very angry with her she would go to her room. He would not
go on living with her, she was sure of that, and her heart seemed
to stand still when she entered the house and saw the study door
open and Ned looking through the papers.
"I have come back to look for some papers," he said. "It is very
annoying. I have lost half the day," and he went on looking among
his papers and she could see that he suspected nothing. "Do you
know when is the next train?"
She looked out the trains for him, and after he had found the
papers he wanted they went into the garden.
She talked of her flowers with the same interest as she had done
many times before, and when he asked her to go for a walk with him
on the hill she consented, although it was almost unbearable to
walk with him for the last time through the places where they had
walked so often, thinking that their lives would move on to the
end unchanged; and they walked about the hill talking of Irish
history, their eyes often resting on the slender outlines of
Howth, until it was time for Ned to go to the station.
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