oble desire to see David; but one long to be disappointed. He did not
return home during his vacation; she went away during hers. The autumn
following he was back in college; she at her school. Then the Christmas
holidays and his astounding, terrible home-coming, put out of college
and church. As soon as she heard of that awful downfall, Gabriella felt
a desire to go straight to him. She did not reason or hesitate: she
went.

And now for two months they had been seeing each other every few days.

Thus by the working out of vast forces, the lives of Gabriella and
David had been jostled violently together. They were the children of
two revolutions, separate yet having a common end: she produced by the
social revolution of the New World, which overthrew mediaeval slavery;
he by the intellectual revolution of the Old World, which began to put
forth scientific law, but in doing this brought on one of the greatest
ages of religious doubt. So that both were early vestiges of the same
immeasurable race evolution, proceeding along converging lines. She,
living on the artificial summits of a decaying social order, had
farthest to fall, in its collapse, ere she reached the natural earth;
he, toiling at the bottom, had farthest to rise before he could look
out upon the plains of widening modern thought and man's evolving
destiny. Through her fall and his rise, they had been brought to a
common level. But on that level all that had befallen her had driven
her as out of a blinding storm into the church, the seat and asylum of
religion; all that had befallen him had driven him out of the churches
as the fortifications of theology. She had been drawn to that part of
worship which lasts and is divine; he had been repelled by the part
that passes and is human.

XVI

Although Gabriella had joyously greeted the day, as bringing exemption
from stifling hours in school, her spirits had drooped ere evening with
monotony. There were no books in use among the members of that lovable
household except school-books; they were too busy with the primary joys
of life to notice the secondary resources of literature. She had no
pleasant sewing. To escape the noise of the pent-up children, she must
restrict herself to that part of the house which comprised her room. A
walk out of doors was impracticable, although she ventured once into
the yard to study more closely the marvels of the ice-work; and to the
edge of the orchard, to ascertain ho