Courtland was like his gay old self when he got back to the dormitory.  He joked a great deal.  His eyes were bright and his color better than it had been since he was sick.  He said nothing about the morning service, and by and by Bill Ward ventured a question:  “What kind of a harangue did you hear this morning?”

“Rotten!” he answered, promptly, and turned away.  Somehow that question recalled him to the uneasiness within his soul for which he had sought solace in the church service.  He became silent again, and, strolling away into Stephen’s room and closing the door, sat down.

There was something strange about that room.  The Presence seemed always to be there.  It hadn’t made itself felt in the church at all, as he had half hoped it would.  He had taken Tennelly with him because he wanted something tangible, friendly, sane, from the world he knew, to give him ballast.  If the Presence had been in the church, with Tennelly by his side, he would have been sure it was not wholly a hallucination connected with his memory of Stephen.

It was strange, for now that he sat there in that quiet room that had once witnessed the trying out of a manly soul, and saw the calm eyes of the plain mother on the wall opposite, and the true eyes of the dowdy school-boy on the other wall, he was feeling the Presence again!

Why hadn’t he felt its power in the church?  Was it because of the presence of such people in the temple as that little mean-souled professor, whom everybody knew to be insincere from the crown of his head to the soles of his sly little feet?  Was it because the people were cold and careless and didn’t sing even with their lips, let alone their hearts, but hired it all done for them?

And then there had been that call of his name when he was with Gila Dare, as clear and distinct, like a friend he had left outside who had grown tired of waiting, and worried about him.  Why hadn’t the sense of the Presence gone with him into the room?  Would a Presence like that be afraid of hostile influences?  No.  If it was real and a Presence at all it would be more powerful than any other influence in the universe.  Then why?

Could it be that he had gone deliberately into an influence that would make it impossible for the Presence to guide?

Or was it possible that his own attitude toward that girl had been at fault?  He had gone to see her regarding her somewhat lightly.  As a gentleman he should regard no woman with disrespect.  Her womanhood should be honored by him even if she chose to dishonor it herself.  If he had gone to see Gila with a different attitude toward her, expecting high, fine things of her, rather than merely to be amused by one whom he scarcely regarded seriously, perhaps all this strange mental phenomena would not have come to pass.