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[Aetat. 21-22 ] J O Y C E 171letter. Please write to me, won't you? Believe me, my dear Nora, I honouryou very much but I want more than your caresses. You have left meagain in an anguish of doubt.I A) 7729 August 1904.Nora resisted his extremism by trying to bring him within the range ofpeople she had known or could imagine, and he, half-pleased and halfresentfulat being considered human, confessed more crimes to appallher and test her. Then he would tell her penitently, as in a letter ofSeptember 10, 'There is something also a little devilish in me that makesme delight in breaking down people's ideas of me and proving to themthat I am really selfish, proud, cunning and regardless of others.' 78Norafelt what he was about; she refused to believe he was evil; she cut throughhis posturings so ruthlessly that sometimes, when they happened not tobe posturings or were especially dear posturings, he was discomfited. Theirrelationship was becoming as complex as any young novelist could havewished.His mind was playing with departure, but he was not yet sure in whatcompany. He could still unbind this tie with Nora which might prove anencumbrance, and he gave up slowly another notion, of going off withan acting troupe. 79While he was trying to decide what to do, he wasobliged to change his quarters. The McKernans went off on holiday andclosed their house. Joyce did not want to return to 7 St. Peter's Terrace,where his family lived. At James Cousins's earnest entreaty he stayed twonights with Cousins and his wife on Strand Road, Sandymount, but dislikedtheir do-good household. They for their part considered him the'lost anflel of a ruined .paradise ' 80Then, more a vagabond than everoefore, he stayed a few nights at his Aunt Josephine Murray's, but hisUncle William became annoyed, perhaps because of his unseemly hours,and locked him out. He stayed one night with a medical student namedO'Callaghan, and at last, on September 9, ended up with Oliver St. JohnGogarty in the strangest residence he was ever to have, the Martello towerat Sandycove.* 81Squat and severe, this tower was one of fifteenbuilt between Dublinand Bray a hundred years before as a defense against Napoleonic invasion.Forty feet high, with eight-foot thick walls, it had the look of abastion of much earlier date. The entrance was about ten feet from theground, originally reached only by rope ladder, but latterly by a flightofsteps. Ulysses asserts, and a tower inventory confirms, that only one entrancekey was furnished. It opens one of two ponderous doors that lead*The tower was probably so named from Cape Mortella in Corsica, itself named after akind of wild myrtle that grew around it. In 1794 the British managed to seize a tower onthis cape only with the utmost difficulty and after lengthy bombardment, so they ratherunimaginatively copied it to protect their own coasts.