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 recover your ideas—­the ideas that are necessary to you—­or you may go on discovering the truth, and in the end may perhaps find a way whereby you may leave your parish without causing scandal.  To be quite truthful, that is what I hope will happen.  However this may be, I hope if we ever meet again it will not be till you have ceased to be a priest.  But all this is a long way ahead.  We are going East, and shall not be back for many months; we are going to visit the buried cities in Turkestan.  I do not know if you have ever heard about these cities.  They were buried in sand somewhere about a thousand years ago, and some parts have been disinterred lately.  Vaults were broken into in search of treasure.  Gold and precious stones were discovered, but far more valuable than the gold and silver, so says Mr. Poole, are certain papyri now being deciphered by the learned professors of Berlin.

’You know the name of Mr. Poole’s book, “The Source of the Christian River”?  He had not suspected that its source went further back than Palestine, but now he says that some papyri may be found that will take it far back into Central Asia.