to see her or if he should send for her. There were confessions in the
afternoon, and expecting that she would come to confess to him, he had
not sent for her. One never knows; perhaps it was her absence from
confession that had angered him. His temper took a different turn that
evening. All night he had lain awake; he must have been a little mad
that night, for he could only think of the loss of a soul to God, and of
God's love of chastity. All night long he had repeated with variations
that it were better that all which our eyes see--this earth and the
stars that are in being--should perish utterly, be crushed into dust,
rather than a mortal sin should be committed; in an extraordinary
lucidity of mind he continued to ponder on God's anger and his own
responsibility towards God, and feeling all the while that there are
times when we lose control of our minds, when we are a little mad. He
foresaw his danger, but he could not do else than rise from his bed and
begin to prepare his sermon, for he had to preach, and he could only
preach on chastity and the displeasure sins against chastity cause to
God. He could think but of this one thing, the displeasure God must feel
against Nora and the seducer who had robbed her of the virtue God prized
most in her. He must have said things that he would not have said at any
other time. His brain was on fire that morning, and words rose to his
lips--he knew not whence nor how they came, and he had no idea now of
what he had said. He only knew that she left the church during his
sermon; at what moment he did not know, nor did he know that she had
left the parish till next day, when the children came up to tell him
there was no schoolmistress. And from that day to this no news of her,
nor any way of getting news of her.

His thoughts went to the hawthorn-trees, for he could not think of her
any more for the moment, and it relieved his mind to examine the green
pips that were beginning to appear among the leaves. 'The hawthorns will