“Is this you, Norah?” he asked.
The crushing fatality of her years pressed down upon her; she suddenly realised that she had lost something very precious; that all her accidents and faults were bunched together and now laid before her. He had grown so big too; a man he looked.
“Is it yerself that’s in it, Dermod Flynn?” she asked. “I didn’t expect to meet you here. Have ye been away home since I saw ye last?” She thought she detected a wave of pity sweeping over Dermod’s face and resting in his eyes.
“I have never been at home yet,” he answered. “Have you?”
“Me go home!” she replied almost defiantly. “What would I be going home for now with the black mark of shame over me? D’ye think that I’d darken me mother’s door with the sin that’s on me, heavy on me soul? Sometimes I’m thinkin’ long, but I never let on to anybody, and it’s meself that would like to see the old spot again. It’s a good lot I’d give to see the grey boats of Dooey goin’ out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey duskus of the harvest evenin’. D’ye mind the time ye were at school, Dermod, and the way ye struck the master with the pointer?”
“I mind it well,” said Dermod with a laugh, “and you said that he was dead when he dropped on the form.”
“And d’ye mind the day that ye went over beyont the mountains with the bundle under yer arm? I met ye on the road and ye said that ye were never comin’ back.”
“You did not care whether I returned or not. You did not stop to bid me good-bye.”
“I was frightened of ye,” answered Norah, who noticed that Dermod spoke resentfully, as if she had been guilty of some unworthy action.
“Why were ye frightened?” he asked.