the southern road,
the mountains unfolding their many aspects in the gray moonlight, and
melting away in misty perspectives.

VII

_From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty._

'4, WILSON STREET, LONDON,

'_June_ 8, 19--,

'FATHER GOGARTY,

'I did not answer your first letter because the letters that came into
my mind to write, however they might begin, soon turned to bitterness,
and I felt that writing bitter letters would not help me to forget the
past. But your second letter with its proposal that I should return to
Ireland to teach music in a convent school forces me to break silence,
and it makes me regret that I gave Father O'Grady permission to write to
you; he asked me so often, and his kindness is so winning, that I could
not refuse him anything. He said you would certainly have begun to see
that you had done me a wrong, and I often answered that I saw no reason
why I should trouble to soothe your conscience. I do not wish to return
to Ireland; I am, as Father O'Grady told you, earning my own living, my
work interests me, and very soon I shall have forgotten Ireland. That is
the best thing that can happen, that I should forget Ireland, and that
you should forget the wrong you did me. Put the whole thing, and me,
out of your mind; and now, good-bye, Father Gogarty.

'NORA GLYNN.'

'Good heavens! how she hates me, and she'll hate me till her dying day.
She'll never forget. And this is the end of it, a bitter, unforgiving
letter.' He sat down to think, and it seemed to him that she wouldn't
have written this letter if she had known the agony of mind he had been
through. But of this he wasn't sure. No, no; he could not believe her
spiteful. And he walked up and down the room, trying to quell the
bitterness rising up within him. No other priest would have taken the
trouble; they would have just forgotten all about it, and gone about
congratulating themselves on their wise administration. But he had acted
rightly, Father O'Grady had approved of what he had done; and this was
his reward. She'll never come back, and will never forgive him; and ever
since writing to her he had indulged in dreams of her return to Ireland,
thinking how pleasant it would be to go down to the lake in the
mornings, and stand at the end of the sandy spit looking across the lake
towards Tinnick, full of the thought that she was there with his sisters
earning her living. She wouldn't be in his parish, but they'd have