Lindblom Media

He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running
forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins
or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:

--GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID
AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD.
WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLY
AND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE!

He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering
his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh
wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen
and said:

--We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a
believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it
somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?

--The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.

--O, Haines said, you have heard it before?

--Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.

--You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the
narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a
personal God.

--There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.

--Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his
sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it
open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards
Stephen in the shell of his hands.

--Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or
you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal
God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?

--You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible
example of free thought.