Gabriel Caressed His Hand

He caressed her hand, just as he had caressed her first letter to him. He did not question her again, for he felt that she would tell him of herself. It was in the winter, she said, about the beginning of the winter when I was going to leave my grandmothers and come up here to the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and wouldn't be let out,. His people in Octorade were written to. He was in decline, they said, or something like that I never knew rightly. She paused for a moment inside. "Oh, the day I heard that, that he was dead"