The simple saint-like
face of the plain farmer's-wife-mother looked down upon it all with
peace and resignation. This life was not all. There was another. Her
eyes said that. Paul Courtland stood a long time gazing into them.
Then he closed the door and knelt by the little table, laying his
forehead reverently upon the Bible.
Since he had returned to college and things of life had become more
real, Reason had returned to her throne and was crying out against his
"fancies." What was that experience in the hospital but the phantasy of
a sick brain? What was the Presence but a fevered imagination? He had
been growing ashamed of dwelling upon the thought, ashamed of liking to
feel that the Presence was near when he was falling asleep at night.
Most of all he had felt a shame and a land of perplexity in the
biblical-literature class where he faced "FACTS" as the professor called
them, spoken in capitals. SCIENCE was another force which
mocked his fancies. PHILOSOPHY cooled his mind and wakened him
from his dreams. In this atmosphere he was beginning to think that he
had been delirious, and was gradually returning to his normal state,
albeit with a restless dissatisfaction he had never known before.
But now in this calm, rose-decked room, with the quiet eyes of the
simple mother looking down upon him, the resolutions in their
chaplet-of-palm framing, the age-old Bible thumbed and beloved, he knew
he had been wrong.
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