“You might say he could not get inappropriate food. He was destroyed by a mortal appetite for food you’d call it unlikely for a bird to desire at all. Myself, I never raised a bird that thrived so, learned faster, and had more to say.”

“You never tried to sell him.”

“For one thing I could not afford to turn him loose in Sussex. I told my wife not to be dusting his cage without due caution, not to be talking to him so much herself, the way she did.”

The Welshman looked at him. He said, “Well, he died.”

“Pass by my house!” cried the man from Connemara. “And look in the window, as you’ll likely do, and you’ll see the bird—stuffed. You’ll think he’s alive at first. Open beak! Talking up to the last, like you or I that have souls to be saved.”

“Souls: Is the leading church in Ireland Catholic, would you call Ireland a Catholic country?” The Welshman settled himself anew.

“I would, yes.”

“Is there a Catholic church where you live, in your town?”

“There is.”

“And you go?”

“I do.”

“Suppose you miss. If you miss going to church, does the priest fine you for it?”

“Of course he does not! Father Lavery! What do you mean?”

“Suppose it’s Sunday—tomorrow’s Sunday—and you don’t go to church. Would you have to pay a fine to the priest?”

The man from Connemara lowered his dark head; he glared at the lovers—for she had returned to her place. “Of course I would not!” Still he looked at the girl.

“Ah, in the windows black as they are, we do look almost like ghosts riding by,” she breathed, looking past him.

He said at once, “A castle I know, you see them on the wall.”

“What castle?” said the sweetheart.

“You mean what ghosts. First she comes, then he comes.”

“In Connemara?”

“Ah, you’ve never been there. Late tomorrow night I’ll be there. She comes first because she’s mad, and he slow—got the dagger stuck in him, you see? Destroyed by her. She walks along, carries herself grand, not shy. Then he comes, unwilling, not touching with his feet-pulled through the air. By the dagger, you might say, like a hooked fish. Because they’re a pair, himself and herself, sure as they was joined together—and while you look go leaping in the bright air, moonlight as may be, and sailing off together cozy as a couple of kites to start it again.”

That girl’s straight hair, cut like a little train to a point at the nape of her neck, her little pointed nose that came down in the one unindented line which began at her hair, her swimming, imagining eyes, held them all, like her lover, perfectly still. Love was amazement now. The lovers did not touch, for a thousand reasons, but that was one.