Martin could have a comfortable, easy life of it here,



200 IN CLAY AND IN BRONZE

and could go on with his writing in peace. It was a
great chance for him happening, so luckily, too, at this
very time. . . But the mere thought seemed, somehow,
the end of his great ambition and the interment of his
very soul a common boarding-house bully, the very no-
tion was appalling. At last the thoughts of both retreated
into a very forest of gloom. ..
He rose hurriedly for the morning was already high
and warm, and left the house with an air of decision.
THE MAN 201



III



HE walked with the speed of a fugitive down the
South Circular Road and up through the city.
The sense of the increasing degradation which had
befallen him was heavy about his eyes and his mind.
Henceforth, what better was he than those men, police-
men and Irishmen, who lived on women in New York
City! It had been that way with him and Kitty, but
her beauty had somehow kept him from falling down to
this filthy level. His life had dwindled deplorably, but
as he went up the hill by Findlater's Church and past
Parnell Square into old Dublin, with its Georgian houses,
he felt the full, surging beauty of this lovely city. ..
He thought of lines from poems as he hurried along, and
as he went past the Roman Catholic Church at Phibs-
borough the keen summer wind seemed to strip his mind
of all sin and shame.
