—Where are you fellows off to? What about that game, Cranly?
They parleyed in shouts across the still air about a game of billiards to be played in the Adelphi hotel.Stephen walked on alone and out into the quiet of Kildare Street opposite Maple's hotel he stood to wait,patient again. The name of the hotel, a colourless polished wood, and its colourless front stung him like a glance of polite disdain. He stared angrily back at the softly lit drawingroom of the hotel in which he imagined the sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housed in calm. They thought of army commissions and land agents: peasants greeted them along the roads in the country; they knew the names of certain French dishes and gave orders to jarvies in highpitched provincial voices which pierced through their skintight accents.