There still remained a long strip of plaster meant to keep a dressing of iodoform in its place over the cut on his cheek which Mr.Shea's chair-leg had inflicted.
This he could not get off, and thinking it wiser to make his entry into college after nightfall, he sought a refuge in Mary O'Dwyer's rooms.
He found the poetess laid on a sofa and clad in a blue dressing-gown.
She stretched a hand of welcome to Hyacinth, and then, before he had time to take it, began to laugh immoderately.

The laughing fit ended in sobs, and then tears flowed from her eyes, which she mopped convulsively with an already damp pocket-handkerchief.

Before she had recovered sufficient self-possession to speak, she signed to Hyacinth to fetch a bottle of smelling-salts from the chimney-piece.

He hastened to obey, and found himself kneeling beside the sofa, holding the bottle to her nose.

After a while she recovered sufficiently to tell him that she had not slept at all during the night, and felt extremely unwell and quite unstrung in consequence.