Page 370 - The snake's pass

!
358 the snake's pass.
ask you when we meet on our wedding morning if you
are satisfied."
When it was time to go home we rose up, and—it
might have been that the evening was chilly—a cold
feeling came over me, as though I still stood in the
shadow of the fateful hill. And there in the Cliff Fields
I kissed Norah Joyce for the last time
The two years sped quickly enough, although my not
being able to see Norah at all was a great trial to me.
Often and often I felt tempted almost beyond endur-
ance to go quietly and hang round where she was so
that I might get even a passing glimpse of her ; but I
felt that such would not be loyal to my dear girl. It
was hard not to be able to tell her, even now and
again, how I loved her, but it had been expressly
arranged—and wisely enough too—that I should only
write in such a manner as would pass, if necessary, the
censorship of the schoolmistress. " I must be," said
Norah to me, " exactly as the other girls are — and,
of course, I must be subject to the same rules." And
so it was that my letters had to be of a tempered
warmth, which caused me now and again considerable
pain.
My dear girl wrote to me regularly, and although
there was not any of what her schoolmistress would call
" love" in her letters, she always kept me posted in all her
doings ; and with every letter it was borne in on me that
her heart and feelings were unchanged.