’I send this letter to Beechwood Hall, where you will find it on your return.  As I have already said, you need not answer it; no good will come by answering it.  In years to come, perhaps, when we are both different, we may meet again.

‘OLIVER GOGARTY.’

From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty.

’IMPERIAL HOTEL, CAIRO, EGYPT,

’May 5, 19—.

’DEAR FATHER GOGARTY,

’By the address on the top of this sheet of paper you will see that I have travelled a long way since you last heard from me, and ever since your letter has been following me about from hotel to hotel.  It is lucky that it has caught me up in Egypt, for we are going East to visit countries where the postal service has not yet been introduced.  We leave here to-morrow.  If your letter had been a day later it would have missed me; it would have remained here unclaimed—­unless, indeed, we come back this way, which is not likely.  You see what a near thing it was; and as I have much to say to you, I should be sorry not to have had an opportunity of writing.

’Your last letter put many thoughts into my head, and made me anxious to explain many things which I feel sure you do not know about my conduct since I left London, and the letters I have written to you.  Has it not often seemed strange to you that we go through life without ever being able to reveal the soul that is in us?  Is it because we are ashamed, or is it that we do not know ourselves?  It is certainly a hard task to learn the truth about ourselves, and I appreciate the courage your last letter shows; you have faced the truth, and having learned it, you write it to me in all simplicity.  I like you better now, Oliver Gogarty, than I ever did before, and I always liked you.  But it seems to me that to allow you to confess yourself without confessing myself, without revealing the woman’s soul in me as you have revealed the man’s soul in yourself, would be unworthy.

’Our destinies got somehow entangled, there was a wrench, the knot was broken, and the thread was wound upon another spool.  The unravelling of the piece must have perplexed you, and you must have wondered why the shape and the pattern should have passed suddenly away into thread again, and then, after a lapse of time, why the weaving should have begun again.

’You must have wondered why I wrote to you, and you must have wondered why I forgave you for the wrong you did me.  I guessed that our friendship when I was in the parish was a little more than the platonic friendship that you thought it was, so when you turned against me, and were unkind, I found an excuse for you.  When my hatred was bitterest, I knew somehow, at the back of my mind—­for I only allowed myself to think of it occasionally—­that you acted from—­there is but one word—­jealousy (not a pretty word from your point of view); and it must have shocked you, as a man and as a priest, to