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.
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