often happy, and often unhappy

“Look here, Cranly,” he said. “You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe; whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using my only defense the only arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning”

Cranly seized his arm and steered him round as to lead him back towards Leeson Park. He laughed almost slyly and pressed Stephen’s arm with an elder’s affection.

“Cunning indeed!” he said. “Is it you? You poor poet, you!”

“And you made me confess to you,” Stephen said, thrilled by his touch, “as I have confessed to you so many other things, have I not?”

“Yes, my child,” Cranly said, still gaily.

“You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a grat mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too,”

Cranly, now grave again, slowed his pace and said, “Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be seperate from all other but to have not even one friend,”

“I will take the risk”, said Stephen.

“And not to have one person,” Cranly said, who would be more than a friend, more even than the noblest and truest friend a man ever had.”

His words seemed to struck some deep chord in his own nature. Had he spoken of himself, oh himslf as he was or wished to be? Stephen watched his face for some moments in silence. A cold sadness was there. He had spoken of himself, of his own loneliness, which he feared.

“Of whom are you speaking?”, Stephen asked at length.

Cranly did not answer.