Susan shivered a little, and drew her cloak close about her though it was warm in the café, and oppressive with the smell of cheap wine, black coffee, and stale tobacco.
“You don’t look well,” said Bertram. “Is anything wrong with you?”
“The price of womanhood,” she said. “I’m going to have a baby. The child of a man hanged by the English because he loved Ireland. Funny, isn’t it?”
He put his hand on hers, and groaned a little.
“My poor kid! My dear little sister!”
He was stricken by this news of hers, by the awful memory it revived.
Susan spoke calmly, but with a coldness that was worse than tears or passion.
“I’ll call him Dennis, if it’s a boy. I’ll make him Irish in soul and faith, as his father was. And I’ll teach him to hate England as I hate it.”
Bertram tried to take her hand again, but she pulled it nervously away.
“What’s the good of teaching hate?” he asked. “It gets nowhere. It leads only to more tragedy, more blood, more death. I believe in peace, and love.”