She seemed so strange, so inconclusive.  There seemed to be at least two, if not three, different women in the letters she had written to him, and he sat wondering how a woman with cheeks like hers, and a voice like hers, and laughter like hers, could take an interest in such arid studies.  Her very name, Nora Glynn, seemed so unlike the woman who would accompany Mr. Poole into National Libraries, and sit by him surrounded by learned tomes.  Moreover a mistress does not read Hebrew in a National Library with her paramour.  But what did he know about such women?  He had heard of them supping in fashionable restaurants covered with diamonds, and he thought of them with painted faces and dyed hair, and he was sure that Nora did not dye her hair or paint her face.  No, she was not Poole’s mistress.  It was only his ignorance of life that could have led him to think of anything so absurd....  And then, weary of thinking and debating with himself, he took down a book that was lent some months ago, a monograph on a learned woman, a learned philosophical writer and translator of exegetical works from the German.  Like Nora, she came from the middle classes, and, like Nora, she transgressed, how often he did not know, but with another woman’s husband certainly.  A critical writer and exponent of serious literature.  Taste for learned studies did not preclude abstinence from those sins which in his ignorance of life he had associated with worldlings!  Of course, St. Augustine was such a one.  But is a man’s truth also woman’s truth?  Apparently it is, and if he could believe the book he had been reading, Nora might very well be Poole’s mistress.  Therewith the question came up again, demanding answer:  Why did she write declining any correspondence with him, and three weeks afterwards write another letter inveigling him, tempting him, bringing him to this last pitch of unhappiness?  Was the letter he returned to her prompted by Mr. Poole and by a spirit of revenge?  Three days after he took up his pen and added this paragraph to his unfinished letter: 

’I laid aside my pen, fearing I should ask what are your relations with Mr. Poole.  I have tried to keep myself from putting this question to you, but the torture of doubt overcomes me, and even if you should never write to me again, I must ask it.  Remember that I am responsible to God for the life you lead.  Had it not been for me, you would never have known Poole.  You must grant to every man his point of view, and, as a Christian, I cannot put my responsibility out of mind.  If you lose your soul, I am responsible for it.  Should you write that your relations with Mr. Poole are not innocent, I shall not be relieved of my responsibility, but it will be a relief to me to know the truth.  I shall pray for you, and you will repent your sins if you are living in sin.  Forgive me the question I am putting to you.  I have no right to do so whatever.  Whatever right I had over you when you were in my parish has passed from me.  I exceeded