ue-black hair all
damp and tossed upon her temples, and tried to tell her how sorry he was
that he had put her through the horrors of that fire, she put in a
quivering protest. It was _not_ the fire. She shivered. It was not the
horror and the smoke! It was _not_ Stephen's death, nor the danger to
himself! It was not _any_ of those that had unnerved her! It was that
other awful thing he had said: that ghostly, ghastly, uncanny, dreadful
story of a Presence! She almost shrieked again as she said it, and she
shivered away from him, as if still there were something cold and clammy
in his touch that gave her the horrors.

A cold disappointment settled down upon him. She had not understood. He
looked at her, troubled, disappointed, baffled. It was not possible,
then, for him to bring her this knowledge that he wished so much for her
to have. It was a thing that one could tell about to one's friends, but
could not give to them. It was something they must take for themselves,
must feel and see by themselves! With new illumination he turned to her
and said in a voice wonderfully tender for a man so young:

"Listen, Gila! I have been clumsy in telling you! You cannot see it just
from my poor story. But He will come to _you_ and you shall see Him for
yourself! I will ask Him to come to you as He has to me!"

Again that piercing scream, and with a quick, lithe movement, almost
like a serpent, she slid from his side and stood quivering in the middle
of the room, her eyes flashing, her body shrinking, both little hands
clenched at her throat.

"Stop!" she cried. "Stop!" and screamed again, stamping her foot. "I
won't hear such horrible things! I _won't have_ any spirits coming
around me! I _won't see_ them! Do you understand? I _hate_ that
Presence, and _I hate you_ when you talk like that!"

She had worked herself into a fine tantrum, but there was behind it all
a horrible fear and shrinking from the Christ he had described, the
shrinking of the naked soul in the garden from its God. The drooping,
child-like eyes were wide with horror now; the sweet, innocent mouth was
trembling with emotion. She was anything but Solveig-like. If Courtland
caught a glimpse of the real Gila through it all he laid it to his own
clumsy way of handling the delicate mystery of a girl's shy nature. He
saw she was wrought up beyond her own control, and he was so far under
the illusion that he blamed himself only, and set himself to calm her.

He coa