Rose knew that she must be a good child, but she never learned that there is more to being a good child than just doing what you are told. She did not know where she was. She wanted to be told what to do, and when she was not told, she imagined she had done something wrong. She had never been able to meet the world on its own terms — she did not measure up — and she had no terms of her own, and had not tried to make any. She had not known she had the power to make terms. She found the world difficult, because, while she knew that life is precious and must be watched night and day or it will vanish without warning, she also knew that in the long run life is of no value at all, because it vanishes without warning. Between these two sharp edges she made her way as well as she could. When Hubert first saw Rose, he thought how light and definite her walk was, and that her expression was resolute. He never learned that the courage she showed came not from natural hope or from natural confidence or from any ignorant, natural source, but from her determination to avoid touching the two madnesses as they guided her, pressing too close to her and narrowing her path into a very thin line. She always walked in straight lines. She went from where she was to the place where she was going, and then back again to the place where she had been. She kept close to the house. She might as well have been in a net, for all the freedom she felt.

In the early days of their marriage Hubert and Rose lived in two rooms at the top of a house on Somerville Street, off Stephen’s Green. The first evening they walked in there together was the evening of their wedding day. It was also the occasion of Rose’s first journey in a train — from the town of Wexford, where she was born and brought up, to Dublin. A friend of Hubert’s named Frank Guiney met them at the station to welcome them and to help carry their parcels and suitcases. Rose was carrying a basket of groceries her mother had packed for her at the last minute. It was all she carried, but Hubert and Frank were burdened down. When they reached the top of the tall building they were all breathless from the long flights of stairs. Hubert dropped everything he was carrying on the landing and put his hand against the wall to support himself, until he could catch his breath.

“What made you stop?” Frank said to him. “We’d have been in heaven in another five minutes.”