out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the
perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a kind of waft. And
while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at and
there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would
search her through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they
were, superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so queer.
She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he
was a foreigner the image of the photo she had of Martin Harvey, the matinée
idol, only for the moustache which she preferred because she wasn’t stagestruck
like Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress the same on
account of a play but she could not see whether he had an aquiline nose or a
slightly retroussé from where he was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could
see that, and the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would
have given worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still
and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel buckles
of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. She
was glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings thinking
Reggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here was that of which she
had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy on her face
because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one
else. The very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband.
because she knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned
against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked
man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could convert
him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted healing with
heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty girls, unfeminine,
he had known, those cyclists showing off what they hadn’t got and she just
yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her,
make him forget the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace
her gently, like a real man, crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his
ownest girlie, for herself alone.
Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro nobis. Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away : and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin’s sodality and Father
