Gila’s voice sounded as if she were almost there herself.  She flung along by his side with a vindictive little click of her high-heeled boots and a prance of her whole elaborate little person that showed she was fairly bristling with wrath.

But Courtland’s voice was sad with disappointment.  “Then you didn’t feel it, after all!  I was hoping you did.”

“Feel what?” she asked, sharply.  “I felt something, yes.  What did you mean?” Her voice had softened wonderfully, and she drew near to him and slipped her hand again within his arm.  There was an eagerness in her voice that Courtland wholly misinterpreted.

“Feel the Presence!” He said it gently, reverently, as if it were a magic word, a password to a mutual understanding.

“Presence?” she said, bewildered.  “Yes, I felt a presence, but what presence did you mean?” Her voice was soft with meaning.

“The Presence of God.”

She turned upon him and jerked her arm away.  “The Presence of God in that place?” she demanded.  “No! Never! How perfectly dreadful!  I think that is irreverent!”

“Irreverent?”

“Yes!  Very irreverent!” said Gila, piously.  “And a man like that is profaning holy things.  If you really care for religious things you ought to come to my church, where everything is quiet and orderly and where there are decent people.  Why, those people there to-night looked as if they might all be thieves and murderers!  And outlandish!  My soul!  I never saw anything like it!  Some of their things must have come out of the Ark!  Did you see that girl with the tight green skirt?  Imagine it!  A whole year and a half out of date!  I think it is immodest to wear things when they get out of style like that!  And the idea of that man daring to talk to that kind of people about God coming down to live with them!  I think it was the limit!  As if God cared anything about people of that sort!  I think that man ought to be arrested, putting notions into poor people’s heads!  It’s just such talk as that that makes riots and things.  My father says so!  Getting common, stupid people all worked up about things they can’t understand.  I think it’s wicked!”

Gila raved all the way home.  Courtland, for the most part, let her talk and was silent.

Seated finally in the library, for he could not go away yet, somehow.  There was something he must ask her.  He turned to her, calling her for the first time by her name: 

“But, Gila, you said you felt a Presence.  What did you mean?”

Gila was silent.  The tumult in her face subsided.

She dropped her lashes and played with the frill on the wrist of the long chiffon sleeve of her blouse.  Her eyes beneath their concealing lashes kindled.  Her mouth grew sweet and sensitive, her whole attitude became shy and alluring.  She sat and drooped before the fire, casting now and then a wide, shy, innocent look up, her face half turned away.