e about his congregation.

They noticed almost at once that the most unpopular professor in the
university was acting as usher on the other side of the church. Tennelly
frowned and looked at Courtland, who sat watching the aforesaid usher as
he showed people to their seats, wondering if that man had a thing he
called religion, and if he was in any way related to Stephen Marshall's
Christ. This was a voyage of discovery for Courtland, this visit to a
Christian church. He had scarcely been to religious services since he
entered the university. He had considered them a waste of time. Now he
had come to see if there was really anything in them. It did not occur
to him that they had a real connection with those verses he had read in
the Bible about "doing the will," or that the going or staying away from
them was in any wise obligatory upon one who had allied himself with
Christ. The church stood to him as to many other young pagans such as he
was, for a man-made institution, to be attended or not as one chose.

The music was not uplifting. It was well done by a paid choir, who had
good voices and sang wonderful music, but they had no heart in their
singing. The congregation attempted no more than a murmur of the hymns.
There was not a large congregation.

The sermon was a dissertation on the Book of Jonah, a sort of resume of
all the argument, on both sides, that has torn the theological world in
these latter days. Not a word of Stephen Marshall's Christ, save a sort
of side reference to a verse about Jonah being three days and three
nights in the whale, and the Son of Man being three days in the heart of
the earth. Courtland wasn't even sure that this reference meant the
Christ, and it never entered his head that it touched at the heart of
the great doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. As far as he could
understand the reverend gentleman the arguments he quoted against the
Book of Jonah were far stronger and more plausible than those put forth
in its defense. What was it all about, anyway? What did it matter
whether Jonah was or was not, or whether anybody accepted the book? How
could a thing like that affect the life of a man?

Tennelly watched the expressive face beside him and decided that perhaps
Bill Ward had been half right, after all.

On their way back to the university they met Gila Dare. Gila all in gray
like a dove, gray suit of soft, rich cloth, gray furs of the depth and
richness of smoke, gray suede