PARNELL. That's just what they would say, of course. It's so easy: and pleases—so many.
KATHARINE. All the same—by mere accident—mayn't it be true? It has happened, you know, sometimes, that love and politics haven't quite gone together.
PARNELL. Love and politics never do. Do you think I've loved any of my party-followers: that any of them have loved me?
KATHARINE. Doesn't—O'Kelly?
PARNELL. He's gone now—with the rest.
KATHARINE. Didn't Mr. Biggar?
PARNELL. Dead…. No.
KATHARINE. Still, you love—Ireland.
PARNELL. Not as she is to-day—so narrow and jealous, so stupid, so blind! Has she anything alive in her now worth saving? That Ireland has got to die; and, though it doesn't sound like it, this is the death-rattle beginning. Ireland is going to fail, and deserves to fail. But another Ireland won't fail. She's learning her lesson—or will learn it, in the grave. Something like this was bound to come; but if it were to come again twenty years on, it wouldn't count. She'd know better.
KATHARINE. Twenty years! We shall be an old couple by then.