As a young woman she falls in love with Pádraig, a school teacher, at a dance. Máire was raised with no knowledge of men and the like, as her mother raised her to be only a nun. She was only allowed to enter dances due to the priest being there. During the play, Máire's love for Pádraig never falters. Proof of this is seen how, even after his betrayal throughout the flashbacks, she never breaks her promises to "Never to mention name", "Never to write to" him and to "Never tell anyone about" their relationship. When she becomes pregnant, she is thrown out by her mother, and goes to Dublin, where she meets Mailí, a prostitute, who shows her kindness by telling her of the Social Worker's plans to give her baby up for adoption. Máire rejects this plan, and after an accident that caused her house to collapse around her baby while she was at work, Mailí takes her in before she meets with Pádraig. She kills herself and her baby after this meeting, because Pádraig rejects her and anything to do with the child. Throughout the flashbacks in which she and Pádraig meet, she is constantly told that he loves her, and would marry her, were he not married. Hence, when she finds out from a friend, a year later, that his wife died a month after she was thrown out, Máire has an emotional breakdown, and in finding out that he has remarried since, commits the fatal act in the penultimate scene.