So spring came on, with its final examinations, and Commencement drawing nearer every day.

Through it all Courtland found much time to be with Gila; often in company, or flashing through a crowded thoroughfare by her side; following her fancy; excusing her follies; laying her mistakes and indiscretions to her youth and innocence; always trying to lead up to his great desire, that she might see his Christ.

Tennelly watched the whole performance anxiously.  He wanted Courtland to be drawn out of what he considered his “morbid” state, but not at the price of his peace of mind.  He was very sure that Courtland ought not to marry Gila.  He was equally sure that she meant nothing serious in her present relation to Courtland.  He felt himself responsible in a way because he had agreed in the plot with his uncle to start her on this campaign.  But if Courtland should come out of it with a broken heart, what then?

It was just a week before Commencement that the crisis came.

Gila had summoned Courtland to her.

Gila, in her most imperial mood, wearing a bewildering imported frock whose simple intricacies and daring contrasts were well calculated to upbear a determined spirit in a supreme combat, awaited his coming impatiently.  She knew that he had that day received another offer from Ramsey Thomas, tempting in the extreme, and baited with alluring possibilities that certainly were dazzling to her if they were not to her lover.  She meant to make him tell her of the offer, and she meant to make him accept it that very afternoon and clinch the contract by telephoning the acceptance to the telegraph-office before he left her home.

Courtland was tired.  He had been through a hard week of examinations, he had been on several committees, and had a number of important class meetings, and the like.  There had been functions galore to attend, and late hours that were unavoidable.  He had come to her hoping for a rest and the joy of her society.  Just to watch her dainty grace as she moved about a room, handling the tea things and giving him a delicate sandwich or a crisp cake, filled him with joy and soothed his troubled spirit; it was so like his ideal of what a woman should be.

But Gila was not handing out tea that afternoon.  She had other fish to fry, and she went at her business with a determination that very soon showed him there was no rest to be had there.

Very prettily, but quite efficiently, she bored him for information about his plans.  Had he no plans whatever about what he was going to do as soon as he had finished college?  Of course she knew he had money of his own (he had never told her how much, and there hadn’t really been any way of asking a man like Courtland when he didn’t choose to tell a thing like that), but nowadays that was nothing.  Even rich men all did something.  One wasn’t anything unless one was in something big!  Hadn’t he ever had any offers at all?  It was queer, such a brilliant man as he was.  She knew lots of young fellows who had no end of chances to get into big things as soon as they were done with their education.  Didn’t his father know of something, or have something in mind for him?  Hadn’t he ever been approached?