The Gresham Hotel is the lodging Gabriel has chosen for himself and Gretta after the Morkan sisters’ dance. Its dim corridor and private room briefly frame their imagined escape into married intimacy, but the encounter becomes the setting for a decisive emotional reversal when Gretta’s kiss gives way to the story of Michael Furey.

Selection and arrival

When Aunt Kate asks whether the room has been seen to, Gabriel answers that it is all right and that he has taken one at The Gresham Hotel. Aunt Kate approves the choice as the best thing to do. Gretta is not anxious about leaving the children for one night, since Bessie will look after them. The hotel is thus part of a practical arrangement for the couple’s night away, not a place they discover together on arrival.

After the dance, Gretta leans on Gabriel’s arm as she gets out of the cab and says good-night to the others. Gabriel remembers how proud he had felt of her grace and wifely bearing while they danced; now her touch, together with memories stirred during the evening, brings a sharp pang of desire. At the hotel door he imagines that they have escaped home, friends, and obligations and set out together on a new adventure. That hopeful interpretation belongs to Gabriel’s expectation, not to a shared declaration from Gretta.

The passage to the room

The hotel’s interior slows the movement from public gathering to private encounter. An old man dozes in a hooded chair in the hall, then lights a candle and leads the couple up thickly carpeted stairs. Gretta climbs behind him with her head bowed and shoulders curved, while Gabriel struggles to restrain his desire to seize her. The porter pauses to steady his guttering candle; in the silence Gabriel hears wax fall into its tray and his own heart beat.

In the room, the porter asks what time they want to be called in the morning. Gabriel says eight, declines the electric light, and asks the porter to remove the candle, calling it a handsome article. Once the porter has gone, Gabriel locks the door. Streetlight lies in a long shaft from the window to the door. He crosses toward the window to calm himself, then turns to see Gretta taking off her hat and cloak before a swinging mirror. The confined, shadowed room intensifies Gabriel’s expectation of intimacy, while the ordinary details of the porter, candle, and call time keep the night anchored in routine.

Expectation and reversal

Gabriel’s desire and anger are still in tension when Gretta comes toward him. He has been trying to restrain himself from speaking brutally about the drunken Malins and the pound Gabriel gave him. Instead, he recalls Christmas, when Malins opened a small Christmas-card shop in Henry Street. Gretta then stands before Gabriel, looks at him strangely, rises on tiptoe, rests her hands lightly on his shoulders, and kisses him.

Gabriel takes the kiss as confirmation of the intimacy he has been imagining. Trembling with delight, he smooths Gretta’s hair and supposes that her thoughts may have been running with his, and that she too may have felt desire. The hotel room briefly seems to fulfill his hoped-for reunion. Yet the scene’s emotional meaning is already unstable: Gabriel interprets Gretta’s gesture through his own longing, while her attention is turning elsewhere. The Gresham’s private room therefore marks not a simple romantic culmination but the threshold to the revelation that will undo Gabriel’s assumptions.