od 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