“Lately, more and more, I have been noticing what I can see and what I can’t see,” the Bishop said. “It’s like going in and out of a dream, the way things, rooms, and faces fall away if I only take a few steps this way or that way. It is true that we walk this way only once. It is true. It is true. It is the truth. Indeed it is. It is the very truth. And the other truth is that all is vanity. Yes … Those flowers you have in there on the table now, they are blurred to me as though they were only reflections of themselves. And the whole room in there is dim, very indistinct, but I know what it looks like, thanks to you … I am very glad I managed to get over here today. If it had not been for Mrs. Sheffield Smith I never would have been able to come. They told me they had got a car to bring me and there she was. They are sending me to Parknasilla tomorrow or the next day. The Order has a house there for old fellows like me.” Since his return from the missions, the Bishop had been staying in a rest home at Clontarf. Parknasilla, in Kerry, in the west of Ireland, is a little pocket in the countryside where through some mysterious whim of nature the climate is semitropical, with warm, balmy air and plants and flowers, palm trees and bamboo and so on, that are not usual in other parts of Ireland. “They say the climate is like Spain, or the Riviera,” the Bishop went on. “The Riviera! What do you think of that? They tell me about it as if they were sending me to Heaven.”

He looked at Mrs. Bagot as though he had surprised himself by making a joke and wanted to be sure she had noticed.

“As though they were sending me to Heaven,” he repeated.

But Mrs. Bagot did not want to see the Bishop’s joke. She looked stern, and jumped up to take away his half-empty cup, and then she poured him a cup of hot tea and sat down again.

“I have been hearing of Parknasilla all my life,” Mrs. Bagot said. “It’s only a little place, but they have wonderful plants and flowers there.”

“So they tell me,” the Bishop said, but he had already lost interest in Parknasilla. “Well now, you have these two rooms here, and of course you have a kitchen.”