And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.  For wherein shall it be known that I and my people have found grace in thy sight?  Is it not in that thou goest with us?  So shall we be separated, I and my people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.

Wonderful words those, implying a close relationship that shut out to a certain extent all others who were not one with that Presence.  He wished he knew what it all meant!  And in that moment was born within him a desire to understand the Bible and know how believing scholars explained everything.

But as he went from the room and on his way, he felt that to some extent he had a solution of his trouble.  He was to be under the personal conduct of the Presence of God wherever he went, whatever he did!  This was to make life less complex, and in some mysterious way the power of the Christ with him was to be made manifest to others.  Surely he might trust this in the case of Gila, and feel sure that he would be guided aright; that she would come to see for herself how there was with him always this guiding power.  Surely she would come to know it and love it also.

Gila met him with fluttering delight, poutingly reproaching him for not writing oftener, calling him to order for looking solemn, adoringly pretty herself in a little frilly pink frock that gave her the look of a pale anemone, wind-blown and sweet and wild.

She talked a good deal about the “dandy times” she had had and the “perfectly peachy” men and girls she had met; flattered him by saying she had seen none handsomer or more distinguished than he was.  She accepted as a matter of course the lover-like attitude he adopted, let him tell her of his love as long as he was not too solemn about it, teased and played with him, charmed him with every art she knew, dancing from one mood to another like a sprite, winding her gossamer chains about him more and more, until, when he went from her again, he was fairly intoxicated with her beauty.

He had lulled his anxiety with the thought that he must wait and be patient until Gila saw.  But more and more was it growing hard to approach her about the things that were of most moment to him.  Sometimes when he was wearily trying to find a way back from the froth of her conversation to the real things he hoped she would enjoy with him some day, she would call him an old crab, and summon to her side other willing youths to stimulate his jealousy; youths of sometimes unsavory reputation whose presence gave him deep anxiety for her.  Then he would tell himself he must be more patient, that she was young and must learn to understand little by little.

Gila developed a great interest in Courtland’s future, his plans for a career, of which she chattered to him much and often, suggesting ways in which her father might perhaps help him into a position of prominence and power in the political world.  But Courtland, with a shadow of trouble in his eyes, always put her off.  He admitted that he had thought of politics, but was not ready yet to say what he would do.