Yet there was something about it all that drove him from her.  He must think it out and come to some clear understanding with himself.  As it was, it seemed to him as if he were trying to take peace within himself while before him lay a lot of his own broken vows.  He had vowed to himself to bring her to the Christ and he had not accomplished it.  Instead she had declared she hated him and the Presence both; yet here he sat making love to her and ignoring it all!  He felt a distinct weakness in himself, but did not know how to remedy it.

When he finally got away from Gila and walked feverishly toward the university, he felt as if his soul was crying out within him for a solution of the perplexities in which he was involved.  By his side walked a Friend, but there seemed to be a veil between them.  Ever mingling with his thoughts came the sweet, tear-wet face of Gila, with its Solveig-look, pleading up at him from the mist of the evening, luring him as it were to forget the Christ.  He passed his hand wearily over his eyes, told himself that he had been through a good deal that evening and his nerves were not as strong as they used to be since the fire.

He was surprised to find that it was still early when he got back to his room, barely half past nine.  Yet it had seemed as if it must be near midnight, so much had happened.

What he would have thought if he could have known that at that very minute Tennelly was seated in the chair in the library that he had so lately vacated, and Gila, posing bewitchingly in the firelight, merrily talking him over, is hard to say.

Not that they were saying anything against him—­of course not!  Tennelly would never have stood for that, and Gila knew better.  But Gila had no intention of giving Tennelly any idea how far matters had gone between herself and Courtland.  As for Tennelly, he would have been the most amazed of the three if he could have known all.  He had been Courtland’s intimate friend for so many years—­years count like ages when one is in college—­that he thought he knew him perfectly.  He would have sworn to it that Courtland’s friendship with Gila had not progressed further than a mere first stage of friendship.  He admitted that Gila had an influence over his friend, but that it had really gone heart-deep seemed impossible.  Courtland was a man of too much force, even young as he was, and too much maturity of thought, to be permanently entangled with a girl like Gila.  That was what Tennelly thought before Gila had turned her eyes toward him and flung a few of her silver gossamer threads about his soul.  For always in those first days of his visits to Gila it had been in Courtland’s behalf; first, to see if she was good enough for a friend of his friend, and next to get her partnership in the scheme of turning Courtland’s thoughts away from “morbid” things.

But that night for the first time Tennelly saw the Solveig in Gila, and was stirred on his own account.  The childish blue frock and the simple frilled ’kerchief did their work with his high soul as well; and he sat, charmed, and watched her.  After all, there was more to her than he had thought, or else she was a consummate actress!  So Tennelly sat late before the fire, till Gila knew that he would turn aside again often to see her for himself, and then she let him go.