Mrs. Ascher was at home. She was in the studio, a large bare room at the back of the house. Gorman was with her.
I saw at once that Mrs. Ascher was in a highly emotional condition. I suspected that Gorman had been talking to her about the latest wrong that had been done to Ireland, his Ireland, by the other part of Ireland which neither he nor Mrs. Ascher considered as Ireland at all. On the table in the middle of the room there was a little group on which Mrs. Ascher had been at work earlier in the day. A female figure stood with its right foot on the neck of a very disagreeable beast, something like a pig, but prick-eared and hairy. It had one horn in the middle of its forehead. The female figure was rather well conceived. It was appealing, with a sort of triumphant confidence, to some power above, heaven perhaps. The prick-eared pig looked sulky.
“Emblematic,” said Gorman, “symbolical.”
“The Irish party,” I said, “trampling on Belfast.”
“The spirit of poetry in Ireland,” said Mrs. Ascher, “defying materialism.”
“That,” I said, “is a far nicer way of putting it.”
I took another look at the spirit of poetry. Mrs. Ascher was evidently beginning to understand Ireland. Instead of being nude, or nearly nude, as spirits generally are, this one was draped from head to foot. In Ireland we are very particular about decency, and we like everything to have on lots of clothes.
“But now,” said Mrs. Ascher, tragically, “the brief dream is over. Materialism is triumphant, is armed, is mighty.”
I looked at Gorman for some sort of explanation.
“I’ve just been telling Mrs. Ascher,” he said, “about the gun-running at Larne.”