Tennelly watched the expressive face beside him and decided that perhaps Bill Ward had been half right, after all.
On their way back to the university they met Gila Dare. Gila all in gray like a dove, gray suit of soft, rich cloth, gray furs of the depth and richness of smoke, gray suède boots laced high to meet her brief gray skirts, silver hat with a single velvet rose on the brim to match the soft rose-bloom on her cheeks. Gila with eyes as wide and innocent as a baby's, cupid mouth curved sweetly in a gracious, shy smile, and dainty little prayer-book done in gray suède held devoutly in her little gloved hand.
"Who's that?" growled Tennelly, admiringly, when they had passed a suitable distance.
"Why, that's Bill Ward's cousin, Gila Dare," announced Courtland, graciously. He was still basking in the pleasure of her smile, and thinking how different she looked from last evening in this soft, gray, silvery effect. Yes, he had misjudged her. A girl who could look like that must be sweet and pure and unspoiled. It had been that unfortunate dress last night that had reminded him unpleasantly of the scarlet woman and the awful night of the fire. If he ever got well enough acquainted he would ask her never to wear red again; it made her appear sensual; and even she, delicate and sweet as she was, could not afford to cast a thought like that into the minds of her beholders. It was then he began to idealize Gila.
"Gila Dare!" Tennelly straightened up and took notice. So that was the invincible Gila! That little soft-eyed exquisite thing with the hair like a midnight cloud.
"Some looker!" he commented, approvingly, and wished he were in Courtland's shoes.
"She's got in her work all right," he commented to himself. "Old Court's fallen already. Guess I'll have to buy a straw hat, it'll be more edible."
Courtland was like his gay old self when he got back to the dormitory. He joked a great deal. His eyes were bright and his color better than it had been since he was sick. He said nothing about the morning service, and by and by Bill Ward ventured a question: "What kind of a harangue did you hear this morning?"
"Rotten!" he answered, promptly, and turned away. Somehow that question recalled him to the uneasiness within his soul for which he had sought solace in the church service. He became silent again, and, strolling away into Stephen's room and closing the door, sat down.
There was something strange about that room. The Presence seemed always to be there. It hadn't made itself felt in the church at all, as he had half hoped it would. He had taken Tennelly with him because he wanted something tangible, friendly, sane, from the world he knew, to give him ballast. If the Presence had been in the church, with Tennelly by his side, he would have been sure it was not wholly a hallucination connected with his memory of Stephen.
It was strange, for now that he sat there in that quiet room that had once witnessed the trying out of a manly soul, and saw the calm eyes of the plain mother on the wall opposite, and the true eyes of the dowdy school-boy on the other wall, he was feeling the Presence again!
Why hadn't he felt its power in the church? Was it because of the presence of such people in the temple as that little mean-souled professor, whom everybody knew to be insincere from the crown of his head to the soles of his sly little feet? Was it because the people were cold and careless and didn't sing even with their lips, let alone their hearts, but hired it all done for them?
And then there had been that call of his name when he was with Gila Dare, as clear and distinct, like a friend he had left outside who had grown tired of waiting, and worried about him. Why hadn't the sense of the Presence gone with him into the room? Would a Presence like that be afraid of hostile influences? No. If it was real and a Presence at all it would be more powerful than any other influence in the universe. Then why?
Could it be that he had gone deliberately into an influence that would make it impossible for the Presence to guide?
Or was it possible that his own attitude toward that girl had been at fault? He had gone to see her regarding her somewhat lightly. As a gentleman he should regard no woman with disrespect. Her womanhood should be honored by him even if she chose to dishonor it herself. If he had gone to see Gila with a different attitude toward her, expecting high, fine things of her, rather than merely to be amused by one whom he scarcely regarded seriously, perhaps all this strange mental phenomena would not have come to pass.
Finally he locked the door and knelt down with his head upon the worn Bible. He had no idea of praying. Prayer meant to him but a repetition of a form of words. There had been prayers in his childhood, brought about by the maiden aunt who kept house for his father after his mother's death, and assisted in bringing him up until he was old enough to go away to boarding-school. They were a good deal of a bore, coming as they did when he was sleepy. There was a long, vague one beginning, "Our Father which art," in which he always had to be prompted. There was, "Now I lay me," and "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed I lie upon; Wish I may, wish I might, get the wish I wish to-night!" Or was that a prayer? He never could remember as he grew older.
He did not know why he was drawn to kneel there with his eyes closed and his cheek upon that Bible. Strange that when he was in that room all doubt about the Presence vanished, all uneasiness about reconciling it with realities, laws, and science fled away.
Later he stood in his own room by the window, watching the great red sun go down in the west and light a ruby fire behind the long line of tall buildings that stretched beyond the campus. The glow in no wise resembled, but yet reminded him, of the fire in the glowing grate of the Dare library. Why had that room affected him so strangely? And Gila, little Gila, how sweet and innocent she had looked when they met her that morning with her prayer-book. How wrong he must have been to take the idle talk that people chattered about her and let it influence his thoughts of her. She could not be all that they said, and yet look so sweet and innocent. What had she reminded him of in literature? Ah! he had it. Solveig in Peer Gynt!
How fair! Did ever you see the like?
Looked down at her shoes and her snow-white apron!—
And then she held on to her mother's skirt-folds,
And carried a psalm-book wrapped up in a 'kerchief!—
That ample purple person by her side, with the dark eyes, the double chin, and the hard lines in her painted face, must be Gila's mother! Perhaps people talked about the daughter because of her mother, for she looked it fully! But then a girl couldn't help having a foolish mother! She was to be pitied more than blamed if she seemed silly and frivolous now and then.
What a thing for a man to do, to teach her to trust him, and then guide her and help her and uplift her till she had the highest standards formed! She was so young and tiny, and so sweet at times! Yes, she was, she must be, like Solveig.
If a man with a good moral character, a tolerably decent reputation for good taste and respectability, no fool at his studies, no stain on his name, should go with her, help her, get her to give up certain daring things she had the name of doing—if such a fellow should give her the protection of his friendship and let the world see that he considered her respectable—wouldn't it help a lot? Wouldn't it stop people's mouths and make them see that Gila wasn't what they had been saying, after all?
It came to him that this would be a very pleasant mission, for his leisure hours during the rest of that winter. All thought of any danger to himself through such intercourse as he was suggesting to his thoughts had departed from his mind.
Half