cigarette and lit it at a candle. Then he sat smoking, pushed back
a little from the circle, gravely watching. Sometimes I heard his
deep, grave voice assenting 'Ye-es, ye-es,' with meditative
boredom. Sometimes his little finger flicked off the ash on to the
floor. His manner was that of a man too much interested in the
life about him to wish to be more than a spectator. His interest
was in life, not in ideas. He was new to that particular kind of
life. Afterwards, when I had come to know him, I heard him sum up
every person there with extraordinary point and sparkle. Often
since then, eager to hear more of my friend, I have asked men who
met him casually for a report of him. So often they have said, "He
was a looker-on at life. He came in and sat down and looked on. He
gave nothing in return. He never talked, he only listened. I never
got much out of him. I never got to the real Synge. I was never
conscious of what he felt. Sometimes I felt that there was nothing
in him. I never knew him respond. I never knew him do or say
anything to suggest what he was in himself." When I hear these
phrases, I know that those who utter them really met Synge. His
place was outside the circle, gravely watching, gravely summing
up, with a brilliant malice, the fools and wise ones inside.

A week, or perhaps a fortnight, later, I met him again at the same
place, among the same people. He was talking brightly and
charmingly to a woman. Men usually talk their best to women. When
I turn over my memories of him, it seems that his grave courtesy
was only gay when he was talking to women. His talk to women had a
lightness and charm. It was sympathetic; never self-assertive, as
the hard, brilliant Irish intellect so often is. He liked people
to talk to him. He liked to know the colours of people's minds. He
liked to be amused. His merriest talk was like playing catch with