The uncouth faces passed him two by two, stained yellow or red or livid by the sea, and as he strove to look at them with ease and indifference, a faint stain of personal shame and commiseration rose to his own face. Angry with himself, he tried to hide his face from their eyes by gazing down sideways into the shallow swirling water under the bridge, but he still saw a reflection therein of their top heavy silk hats, and humble tape like collars, and loosely hanging clerical clothes. Brother Hickey. Brother Mcardle. Brother Keogh. Their piety would be like their names, like their faces, like their clothes, and it was idle for him to tell himself that their humble and contrite hearts it might be paid a far richer tribute of devotion than his had ever been, a gift tenfold more acceptable than his elaborate adoration. It was idle for him to move himself to be generous towards them, to tell himself that if he ever came to their gates stripped of his pride, beaten and in beggar's weeds, that they would be generous towards him, loving him as themselves. Idle and embittering finally to argue against his own dispassionate certitude, that the commandment of love bade us not to love our neighbor as ourselves with the same amount and intensity of love, but to love him as ourselves with the same kind of love. The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in accord. Words. Was it their colors? They were voyaging across the deserts of the sky, a host of nomads on the march, voyaging high over Ireland, westward bound.