Finally he locked the door and knelt down with his head upon the worn Bible.  He had no idea of praying.  Prayer meant to him but a repetition of a form of words.  There had been prayers in his childhood, brought about by the maiden aunt who kept house for his father after his mother’s death, and assisted in bringing him up until he was old enough to go away to boarding-school.  They were a good deal of a bore, coming as they did when he was sleepy.  There was a long, vague one beginning, “Our Father which art,” in which he always had to be prompted.  There was, “Now I lay me,” and “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed I lie upon; Wish I may, wish I might, get the wish I wish to-night!” Or was that a prayer?  He never could remember as he grew older.

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.

What a thing for a man to do, to teach her to trust him, and then guide her and help her and uplift her till she had the highest standards formed!  She was so young and tiny, and so sweet at times!  Yes, she was, she must be, like Solveig.

If a man with a good moral character, a tolerably decent reputation for good taste and respectability, no fool at his studies, no stain on his name, should go with her, help her, get her to give up certain daring things she had the name of doing—­if such a fellow should give her the protection of his friendship and let the world see that he considered her respectable—­wouldn’t it help a lot?  Wouldn’t it stop people’s mouths and make them see that Gila wasn’t what they had been saying, after all?