"If you had been here last spring, you would have understood. When they bloom, they are mine, I take possession." After a moment she added: "They bring back the recollection of such happy times--springs long ago. Some time I'll tell you."

"When you were a little girl?"

"Yes."

"I wish I had known you when you were a little girl," said David, in an undertone, looking into the fire.

Gabriella reflected how impossible this would have been: the thought caused her sharp pain.

Some time later, David, who had appeared more and more involved in some inward struggle, suddenly asked a relieving question:--

"Do you know the first time I ever saw you?"

She did not answer at once.

"In the smoke-house," she said with a ripple of laughter. Gabriella, when she was merry, made one, think of some lovely green April hill, snow-capped.

David shook his head slowly. His eyes grew soft and mysterious.

"It was the first time _I_ ever saw YOU," she protested.

He continued to shake his head, and she looked puzzled.

"You saw me once before that, and smiled at me."

Gabriella seemed incredulous and not well pleased.

After a little while David began in the manner of one who sets out to tell a story he is secretly fond of.

"Do you remember standing on the steps of a church the Friday evening before Christmas--a little after dark?"

Gabriella's eyes began to express remembrance. "A wagon-load of cedar had just been thrown out on the sidewalk, the s.e.xton was carrying it into the church, some children were helping, you were making a wreath: do you remember?"

She knew every word of this.

"A young man--a Bible student--pa.s.sed, or tried to pa.s.s. You smiled at his difficulty. Not unkindly," he added, smiling not unkindly himself.

"And that was you? This explains why I have always believed I had seen you before. But it was only for a moment, your face was in the dark; how should I remember?"

After she said this, she looked grave: his face that night had been far from a happy one.

"That day," continued David, quickly grave also, "that day I saw my professors and pastor for the last time; it ended me as a Bible student. I had left the University and the scene of my trial only a little while before."

He rose as he concluded and took a turn across the room. Then he faced her, smiling a little sadly.

"Once I might have thought all that Providential. I mean, seeing the faces of my professors--my judges--last, as the end of my old life; then seeing your face next--the beginning of the new."

He had long used frankness like this, making no secret of himself, of her influence over him. It was embarra.s.sing; it declared so much, a.s.sumed so much, that had never been declared or a.s.sumed in any other way. But her stripped and beaten young Samaritan was no labyrinthine courtier, bescented and bedraped and bedyed with worldliness and conventions: he came ever in her presence naked of soul. It was this that empowered her to take the measure of his feeling for her: it had its effect.

David returned to his chair and looked across with a mixture of hesitancy and determination.

"I have never spoken to you about my expulsion--my unbelief."

After a painful pause she answered.

"You must be aware that I have noticed your silence. Perhaps you do not realize how much I have regretted it."

"You know why I have not?"

She did not answer.

"I have been afraid. It's the only thing in the world I've ever been afraid of."

"Why should you have been?"

"I dreaded to know how you might feel. It has caused a difficulty with every one so far. It separated me from my friends among the Bible students. It separated me from my professors, my pastor. It has alienated my father and mother. I did not know how you would regard it."

"Have I not known it all the time? Has it made any difference?"

"Ah! but that might be only your toleration! Meantime it has become a question with me how far your toleration will go--what is back of your toleration! We tolerate so much in people who are merely acquaintances--people that we do not care particularly for and that we are never to have anything to do with in life. But if the tie begins to be closer, then the things we tolerated at a distance--what becomes of them then?"

He was looking at her steadily, and she dropped her eyes. This was another one of the Prodigal's a.s.sumptions--but never before put so pointedly.

"So I have feared that when I myself told you what I believe and what I do not believe, it might be the end of me. And when you learned my feelings toward what YOU believe--that might be more troublesome still.

But the time has come when I must know."

He turned his face away from her, and rising, walked several times across the room.

At last also the moment had arrived for which she had been waiting.

Freely as they had spoken to each other of their pasts--she giving him glimpses of the world in which she had been reared, he taking her into his world which was equally unfamiliar--on this subject silence between them had never been broken. She had often sought to pa.s.s the guard he placed around this tragical episode but had always been turned away.

The only original ground of her interest in him, therefore, still remained a background, obscure and unexplored. She regretted this for many reasons. Her belief was that he was merely pa.s.sing through a phase of religious life not uncommon with those who were born to go far in mental travels before they settled in their Holy Land. She believed it would be over the sooner if he had the chance to live it out in discussion; and she herself offered the only possibility of this.

Gabriella was in a position to know by experience what it means in hours of trouble to need the relief of companionship. Ideas, she had learned, long shut up in the mind tend to germinate and take root.

There had been discords which had ceased sounding in her own ear as soon as they were poured into another.

"I have always hoped," she repeated, as he seated himself, "that you would talk with me about these things." And then to divert the conversation into less difficult channels, she added:--

"As to what you may think of my beliefs, I have no fear; they need not be discussed and they cannot be attacked."

"You are an Episcopalian," he suggested hesitatingly. "I do not wish to be rude, but--your church has its dogmas."

"There is not a dogma of my church that I have ever thought of for a moment: or of any other church," she replied instantly and clearly.

In those simple words she had uttered unaware a long historic truth: that religion, not theology, forms the spiritual life of women. In the whole history of the world's opinions, no dogma of any weight has ever originated with a woman; wherein, as in many other ways, she shows points of superiority in her intellect. It is a man who tries to apprehend G.o.d through his logic and psychology; a woman understands Him better through emotions and deeds. It is the men who are concerned about the cubits, the cedar wood, the Urim and Thummim of the Tabernacle; woman walks straight into the Holy of Holies. Men constructed the Cross; women wept for the Crucified. It was a man--a Jew defending his faith in his own supernatural revelation--who tried to ram a sponge of vinegar into the mouth of Christ, dying; it was women who gathered at the sepulchre of Resurrection. If Christ could have had a few women among his Apostles, there might have been more of His religion in the world and fewer creeds barnacled on the World's Ship of Souls.

"How can you remain in your church without either believing or disbelieving its dogmas?" asked David, squarely.

"My church is the altar of Christ and the house of G.o.d," replied Gabriella, simply. "And so is any other church." That was all the logic she had and all the faith she needed; beyond that limit she did not even think.

"And you believe in THEM ALL?" he asked with wondering admiration.