Exiles
James Joyce
 The action of the play is very simple. Bertha is jealous of Rowan's relationship with Beatrice, and Hand is jealous of Rowan's relationship with Bertha. Joyce himself described the structure of the play as "three cat and mouse acts", and the action mostly involves Robert Hand's attempts to pounce on Bertha. In the first act, at Rowan's house, Hand kisses Bertha "with passion" several times "and passes his hand many times over her hair". He asks her to come to his own house for a second meeting later that evening. Bertha tells Rowan about this invitation, and asks if she should accept it. Rowan tells her to decide for herself. In the second act, Hand is expecting Bertha at the appointed hour, but instead it is Rowan who appears. Rowan calmly explains that he knows all about Hand's wooing of Bertha. After some minutes of what for Hand is clearly a very awkward conversation, Bertha herself knocks at the door. Hand goes tactfully into the garden, while Rowan explains to Bertha the conversation he has just had with Hand. Rowan then goes home, leaving his wife alone with Hand. Hand again begins to seduce Bertha. The act ends inconclusively, with Hand asking if Bertha loves him, and Bertha explaining: "I like you, Robert. I think you are good... Are you satisfied?" The third act begins in Rowan's house at seven o'clock, the following morning. Bertha tells the maid that she hasn't slept all night. The maid tells her that Rowan has left the house an hour earlier, to go walking on the strand. In the morning newspapers, Hand has published a favourable article about Rowan, written the previous evening. Exactly what has happened the previous night is not entirely clear. Hand and Bertha have shared "a sacred night of love", although the specifics of this are not explicitly stated, and both characters agree that it was "a dream". Hand supplies more detail in his account of the night to Rowan, although of his time with Bertha, he admits only that "she went away". He then claims to have gone to the Vice-Chancellor's lodge where he drank claret, returned home to write the newspaper article, and then gone to a nightclub where he picked up a divorcée and had sex with her ("what the subtle Duns Scotus calls a death of the spirit took place") in the cab on the way home. Hand himself leaves "for foreign parts" (his cousin's house in Surrey), while Rowan and Bertha are reconciled. Bertha admits that she longs to meet her lover, but asserts that the lover is Rowan himself. The resolution of the play lies precisely in the sense of doubt about what occurred between Hand and Bertha between Acts Two and Three. Rowan is wounded by the sense of doubt that he admits he longed for. Indeed, he sees this sense of doubt as what enables him "to be united with [Bertha] in body and soul in utter nakedness".