“There was no need for you to tell him, Mother,” Rose said. She was crying quietly, with her head bent, and he wanted to reach across the table and take her hand, but he was afraid that her mother might guess that the touch of Rose’s hand was already familiar to him. He was afraid of her mother.

“There was every need for me to tell him, Rose,” her mother said. “And there is no need for you to cry like that. You’re not a baby anymore. You’re talking about getting married, and you want to prove that you’re sensible enough to get married. And that’s why I say that you ought to think this over, both of you, a bit longer, before you make any promises. Think it over for a while. A month, or a week, maybe. Maybe it would be a good thing if you stayed away from here for a week or so, Hubert, and gave it thought. And Rose can be thinking, too.”

“I’ll be back in Dublin in a week,” Hubert said.

Rose turned and looked at him and he looked across the table at her. He knew she wanted him to say that his mind was made up and that he would never change it. Her eyes were timid and afraid, but they met his eyes with certainty and she looked ready to smile. She was sure that he would say to her mother that his mind was made up and that the fellow who had played that trick on her deserved to be kicked, and that there was no doubt at all in his mind as to what he wanted to do and that they would go together to the priest at the first possible opportunity and arrange to be married as soon as possible. He couldn’t be coming down here from Dublin all the time. And he wanted her, but Rose didn’t expect him to say that out loud.

But Hubert was thinking that she was there for the taking. She would walk out of her mother’s house with him, or she would stay there and wait for him. She would do whatever he said. No matter what he said or did, she would not complain against him or disagree with him. And there was time. And he wanted her mother to think him a responsible man who weighed and lived by reason and not by whim or impulse. He took his eyes from Rose and looked at her mother.

“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “Either I’ll come back tomorrow night or I won’t. I’ll sleep on it.”

He looked then at Rose with a grin of complicity, but her face was not the same. It had been spoiled and blurred by astonishment and she looked stupid and cruel. She looked quickly at her mother, who regarded her with calm triumph.