There was something so genuine and sincere about his
face that Tennelly decided that he must really believe all that junk he
had been preaching, after all. He wasn't a fake, he was merely a good,
wholesome sort of a fanatic. He bowed pleasantly and said a few
commonplaces as he passed out.
"Seems to be a good sort," he murmured to Courtland. "Pity he's tied
down to that sort of thing!"
Courtland looked at him sharply. "Is that the way you feel about it,
Nelly?" There was something half wistful in his tone.
Tennelly looked at him sharply. "Why, sure! I think he's a bigger man
than his job, don't you?"
"Then you didn't feel it?"
"Feel what?"
"The Presence of God in that place!"
There was something so simple and majestic about the way Courtland made
the extraordinary statement--not as a common fanatic would make it, nor
even as one who was testing and feeling around for confirmation of a
hope, but as one who knew it to be a fact beyond questioning, which the
other merely hadn't been able to see--that Tennelly was almost
embarrassed.
"Why--I-- Why--no! I can't say that I noticed any particular
manifestation. I was entirely too much taken up by the smell to observe
the occult. Say, what's eating you, anyway, Court? Such foolishness
isn't like you. You ought to cut it out. You know a thing like this can
get on your nerves if you let it, just like anything else, and make you
a monomaniac.
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