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across the ebbed strand. It was a mile or more to the sandbanks. They waded through pools in which the water had grown warm from the strong sun and crossed swift-flowing rivulets which had worn deep channels in the sand. Behind them the houses along the front grew tiny with distance. Far out in front of them they could discern the thin white edge of foam and beyond it the calm water of the open sea. The sky was high and blue and immense.
    ‘Watch out for shells,’ Fitz said over his shoulder.
    She smiled to let him know that she remembered.
    He took her hand. At the touch of his fingers on hers they both stopped. In a moment he had come close to her. His face, above hers, was dark against the sun; but hers was radiant and expectant, her mouth half open, her eyes closed. Alone in the centre of the sun-filled strand they kissed. Her own love frightened her. She said:
    ‘What is going to become of me if I keep on loving you like this?’
    He held her to him, repeating her name. After a while she released herself gently and they walked on again, hand in hand, until the sand became dry and after that fine and shot through with silver specks which clothed their feet. They climbed among the hillocks of strong, sparse grass and sat down. Behind them the narrow breakwater reached out a further mile into the sea, dividing the river at their backs from the strand in front of them, keeping navigable depth for the shipping traffic of the Port of Dublin. The strand they had just crossed was sunlit and empty. They were quite alone.
    ‘Were you waiting a long time?’ Mary asked.
    ‘Not very long, but I was a bit afraid Miss Gilchrist had taken the day herself and left you stuck in the house.’
    ‘She wouldn’t look at the King. She’s a Fenian.’
    ‘All the Fenians are dead and gone.’
    ‘Not for her. She keeps a picture of one of them in her room. They used to call at her house when she was a child in Tipperary. She told me she once saw the watchfires lit on the hills and it was a signal for a rising against the British.’
    ‘I’d like to have seen them myself,’ Fitz admitted.
    ‘It does no good,’ Mary said.
    She had brought some sandwiches with her, which she had filled with left-over meat. Fitz had a bottle with milk and also some oranges. They began to eat. The walk across the strand and the salt flavour of the air lent an edge to their appetites.
    ‘Ham,’ Fitz remarked appreciatively. He bit into the sandwich.
    ‘Pity it’s not tomorrow,’ Mary said. ‘They’ll have chicken tonight, for Father O’Connor and Mr. Yearling.’
    As Fitz took another, a thought struck him.
    ‘If they ever want a butler, let me know.’
    He broke a piece of bread and threw it lazily across the sand towards a gull which had been resting, its head tucked in tight against its shoulders. The gull was awake immediately. It stalked across and began to eat.
    ‘It’s beautiful here,’ Mary said.
    ‘As nice as Cahirdermot?’ Fitz asked.
    ‘Different. We had only mountains and fields. There was a river too, of course, but only the boys used to swim.’
    They finished their meal and walked across to where firmer sand began beyond the tide-mark. At a pool left by the tide they knelt close together and peered among the rocks and seaweed. A dead crab, tangled in a frond of seaweed, swayed gently beneath the surface. It was a small, green crab, its upturned belly showing the V-shaped cut in its shell. Fitz pointed at this.
    ‘That’s where he keeps his money.’
    Mary saw his face reflected in the pool, so close to her own that they might have been painted together on a medallion, against a background of blue sky and barely discernible wisps of white cloud. Fitz, she knew, was telling her something he had believed as a child. She had often wondered about his childhood, about his growing up in the noise and bustle of the city, about his work among trundling carts and swinging cranes and furnaces so huge that when he told her of them she