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28o J A M E S I 1909 ]I have heard this only an hour ago from his lips. My eyes are full oftears, tears of sorrow and mortification. My heart is full of bitterness anddespair. I can see nothing but your face as it was then raised to meetanother's. O, Nora, pity me for what I suffer now. I shall cry for days. Myfaith in that face I loved is broken. O, Nora, Nora have pity for my poorwretched love. I cannot call you any dear name because tonight I havelearnt that the only being I believed in was not loyal to me.0 Nora is all to be over between us?Write to me, Nora, for the sake of my dead love. I am tortured bymemories.Write to me, Nora, I loved you only: and you have broken my faith inyou.O, Nora, I am unhappy. I am crying for my poor unhappy love.Write to me, Nora.6 August 1909Jim 1 8That night he scarcely slept, and at dawn of the next day wrote her againin the same despair.44 Fontenoy StreetIt is half past six in the morning and I am writing in the cold. I havehardly slept all night.Is Georgie my son? The first night I slept with you in Zurich was Octobernth and he was born July 27th. That is nine months and 16 days. Iremember that there was very little blood that night. Were you fucked byanyone before you came to me? You told me that a gentleman namedHolohan (a good Catholic, of course, who makes his Easter duty regularly)wanted to fuck you when you were in that hotel, using what they call a'French letter'. Did he do so? Or did you allow him only to fondle youand feel you with his hands?Tell me. When you were in that field near the Dodder (on the nightswhen I was not there) with that other (a 'friend' of mine) were you lyingdown when you kissed? Did you place your hand on him as you did onme in the dark and did you say to him as you did to me 'What is it, dear?'One day I went up and down the streets of Dublin hearing nothing butthose words, saying them over and over again to myself and standing stillto hear better the voice of my love.What is to become of my love, now? How am I to drive away the facewhich will come now between our lips? Every second night along the samestreets!1 have been a fool. I thought that all the time you gave yourself only tome and you were dividing your body between me and another. In Dublinhere the rumour here is circulated that I have taken the leavings of others.Perhaps they laugh when they see me parading 'my' son in the streets.O Nora! Nora! Nora! I am speaking now to the girl I loved, who hadred-brown hair and sauntered over to me and took me so easily into herarms and made me a man.*'Bertha says of her husband in Exiles (614 [430]), 'I made him a man.'