ds 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 assumptions--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 pass 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 passing 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