Edward Quinn, James Joyce's Dublin, with Selected Writings from Joyce's Works (Nice, 1974).
Page 41 "He sat a long time
over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor sprawled on the counter
reading the ‘Herald’ and yawning. Now and again a tram was heard
swishing along the lonely road outside.
As he sat there, living over his life
with her and evoking alternately the two images in which he now conceived her,
he realized that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had
become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could
he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he
could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How
was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must
have been, sitting night after night, alone in that room. His life would be
lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory – if anyone
remembered him." Dubliners (no page number given).