ight shines through. We veil our
eyes, for we do not like the light. It is really very difficult to tell
the truth, Father Gogarty; I find it difficult now to tell you why I
wrote all these letters. Because I liked you? Yes, and a little bit
because I wished you to suffer; I don't think I shall ever get nearer
the truth than that. But when I asked you to meet us abroad, I did so in
good faith, for you are a clever man, and Mr. Poole's studies would
please you. At the back of my mind I suppose I thought to meet him
would do you good; I thought, perhaps, that he might redeem you from
some conventions and prejudices. I don't like priests; the priest was
the only thing about you I never liked. Was it in some vain,
proselytizing idea that I invited you? Candidly, I don't know, and I
don't think I ever shall. We know so very little about this world that
it seems to me waste of time to think about the next. My notion is that
the wisest plan is to follow the mood of the moment, with an object more
or less definite in view.... Nothing is worth more than that. I am at
the present moment genuinely interested in culture, and therefore I did
not like at all the book you sent me, "The Imitation," and I wrote to
tell you to put it by, to come abroad and see pictures and statues in a
beautiful country where people do not drink horrid porter, but nice
wine, and where Sacraments are left to the old people who have nothing
else to interest them. I suppose it was a cruel, callous letter, but I
did not mean it so; I merely wanted to give you a glimpse of my new life
and my new point of view. As for this letter, Heaven knows how you will
take it--whether you will hate me for it or like me; but since you wrote
quite frankly to me, confessing yourself from end to end, I feel bound
to tell you everything I know about myself--and since I left Ireland I
have learned a great deal about myself and about life. Perhaps I should
have gone on writing to you if Mr. Poole had not one day said that no
good would come of this long correspondence; he suspected I was a
disturbing influence, and, as you were determined to live in Ireland,
he said it were better that you should live in conventions and
prejudices, without them your life would be impossible.

'Then came your last letter, and it showed me how right Mr. Poole was.
Nothing remains now but to beg your forgiveness for having disturbed
your life. The disturbance is, perhaps, only a passing one. You may