came from his room. My heart stopped, the world
stopped, everything went black. All the stories that I had read and heard
came back. When he knocked at my door I refused to see him. I never saw
him again until that night in Paris when he forced his way into my
apartment."

"Hang it, Nora, this doesn't sound like him!"

"I saw her."

"He wrote you?"

"I returned the letters, unopened."

"That wasn't square. You might have been wrong."

"He wrote five letters. After that he went to India, to Africa and back to
India, where he seemed to find consolation enough."

Harrigan laid it to his lack of normal vision, but to his single optic
there was anything but misery in her beautiful blue eyes. True, they
sparkled with tears; but that signified nothing: he hadn't been married
these thirty-odd years without learning that a woman weeps for any of a
thousand and one reasons.

"Do you care for him still?"

"Not a day passed during these many months that I did not vow I hated
him."

"Any one else know?"

"The padre. I had to tell some one or go mad. But I didn't hate him. I
could no more put him out of my life than I could stop breathing. Ah, I
have been so miserable and unhappy!" She laid her head upon his knees and
clumsily he stroked it. His girl!

"That's the trouble with us Irish, Nora. We jump without looking, without
finding whether we're right or wrong. Well, your daddy's opinion is that
you should have read his first letter. If it didn't ring right, why, you
could have jumped the traces. I don't believe he did anything wrong at
all. It isn't in the man's blood to do anything underboard."

"But I _saw_ her," a queer look in her eyes as she glanced up at him.

"I don't care a kioodle if you did. Take it from me, it was a put-up job
by that Calabrian woman. She might have gone to his room for any number of
harmless things. But I think she was curious."

"Why didn't she come to me, if she wanted to ask questions?"

"I can see you answering 'em. She probably just wanted to know if you were
married or not. She might have been in love with him, and then she might
not. These Italians don't know half the time what they're about, anyhow.
But I don't believe it of Courtlandt. He doesn't line up that way.
Besides, he's got eyes. You're a thousand times more attractive. He's no
fool. Know what I think? As she was coming out she saw _you_ at your door;
and the devil in her got busy."

Nora rose, flung her arms aroun