Chapter 31

Tennelly stepped within the room, gave one keen, questioning look at Aquilar as he passed him, searching straight into the depths of his startled, shifty eyes, and came and stood before the crouching girl. She had dropped into a chair and was sobbing as if her heart would break.

"What does this mean, Gila?"

Tennelly's voice was cold and stern.

Courtland looked at his shocked face and turned away from the pain of it. But when he looked for the man who had wrought this havoc he had suddenly melted from the room! The front door was blowing back and forth in the wind, and the clerk and bell-boy stood, open-mouthed, staring. Courtland closed the door of the reception-room and hurried out on the veranda, but saw no sign of any one in the wind-swept darkness. The moon had risen enough to make a bright path over the sea, but the earth as yet was wrapped in shadow.

Down in the field, beyond the outbuildings, he heard a whirring sound, and as he looked a dark thing rose like a great bird high above his head. The bird had flown while the flying was good. The lady might face her difficulties alone!

Courtland stood below in the courtyard, while the moon arose and shed its light through the sky, and the great black bird executed an evolution or two and whirred off to the north, doubtless headed for Seattle or some equally inaccessible point. A great helpless wrath was upon him. Dolt that he had been to let this human leper escape from him into the world again! A kind of divine frenzy seized him to capture him yet and put him where he could work no further harm to other willing victims. Yes, he thought of Gila as a willing victim! An hour before he would have called her just plain innocent victim. Now something in her face, her attitude, as she saw him and walked away with her guilty partner, had made him know her at last for a sinful woman. The shackles had burst from his heart and he was free from her allurements for evermore! He understood now why she had bade him choose between herself and Christ. She had no part nor lot in things pure and holy. She hated holiness because she herself was sinful!

It was midnight before Gila and Tennelly came forth, Tennelly grave and sad, Gila tear-stained and subdued.

Courtland was sitting in the big chair before the fireplace, though the fire was smoldering low, and the elevator-boy had long ago retired to slumbers on a bench in a hidden alcove.

Tennelly came straight to Courtland, as though he had known he would be waiting there for him. "I am going to take Gila down to Beechwood. You will come with us?" There was entreaty in the tone, though it was very quiet.

"Shall I take my car?"

"No. You will ride with me on the front seat. Is there a maid here that I can hire to go with us? We can bring her back in the morning."

"I'll find out."

That was a silent ride through the late moonlight. The men spoke only when it was necessary to keep the right road. Gila, huddled sullenly in the back seat beside a dozing, gray-haired chambermaid, spoke not at all. And who shall say what were her thoughts as hour after hour she sat in her humiliation and watched the two men whom she had wronged so deeply? Perhaps her spirit seethed the more violently within her silent, angry body because she was not yet sure of Tennelly. Her tears and explanations, her pleading little story of deceit and innocence, had not wrought the charm upon him that they might had not Aquilar been known to him for the past two weeks, a stranger who had been hanging about Gila, and who had been encouraged against her lover's oft-repeated warnings. A certain mysterious story of an unfaithful wife put an air of romance about him that Tennelly had not liked. Gila had never seen him so serious and hard to coax as he had been to-night. He had spoken to her as if she were a naughty child; had commanded her to go at once to her aunt in Beechwood and remain there the allotted time. She simply _had_ to obey or lose him. There were things about Tennelly's fortune and prospects that made him most desirable as a husband. Moreover, she felt that through marrying Tennelly she could the better hurt Courtland, the man whom she now hated with all her heart.

They reached Beechwood at not too unearthly an hour. The aunt was surprised, but not unduly so, for Gila was a girl of many whims, and that she came at all to quiet Beechwood to rest was shock enough for one day. She asked no troublesome questions.

Tennelly would not remain for breakfast, even, but started on the return trip at once, with only a brief stop at a wayside inn for something to eat. The elderly attendant in the back seat was disappointed. She had no chance to get a bit of gossip by the way with any one, but she got good pay for the night's ride, and made up some thrilling stories to tell when she got back that were really better than the truth might have turned out to be, so there was nothing lost, after all.

It was Tennelly who broke the silence between them when he and Courtland were at last alone together. "She only went for a ride in his aeroplane," he said, sadly. "She had no idea of staying more than an afternoon. He had promised to set her down at the next station to Beechwood, where her aunt was to meet her. She was filled with horror and consternation when she found she must be away overnight. But even then she had no idea of his purpose. She says that nobody ever told her about such things, she was ignorant as a little child! She is full of repentance, and feels that this will be a lesson for her. She says she intends to devote her life to me if I will only forgive her."

So that was what she had told Tennelly behind the closed doors!

Before Courtland's eyes there floated a vision of Gila as she first caught sight of him in the office of the inn. If ever soul was guilty in full knowledge of her sin she had been! Again she passed before his vision with shamed head down-drooped and all her proud, imperial manner gone. The mask had fallen from Gila forever so far as Courtland was concerned. Not even her little, pitiful, teary face that morning, when she crept from the car at her aunt's door, could deceive him again.

"And you _believe_ all that?" asked Courtland. He could not help it. His dearest friend was in peril. What else could he do?

"I--don't know!" said Tennelly, helplessly.

There was silence in the room. Then Tennelly did realize a little! Perhaps Tennelly had known all along, better than he!

"And--you will forgive her?"

"I _must_!" said Tennelly, in desperation. "Court, my life is bound up in her!"

"So I once thought!" Courtland was only musing out loud.

Tennelly looked at him sadly.

"She almost wrecked my soul!" went on Courtland.

"I know," said Tennelly, in profound sorrow. "She told me."

"She _told you_?"

"Yes, before we were engaged. She told me that she had asked you to give up preaching, that she could never bear to be a minister's wife. I had begun to realize what that would mean to you then. I respected your choice. It was great of you, Court! But you never really loved her, man, or you could not have given her up!"

Courtland was silent for a moment, then he burst out: "Nelly! It was not that! You _shall_ know the truth! She asked me to give up _my God_ for her!"

"_I have no God_," said Tennelly, dully.

A great yearning for his friend filled the heart of Courtland. "Listen, old man, you _mustn't_ marry her!" he burst out again. "I believe she's rotten all the way through. You didn't see and hear all last night. She _can't be_ true! She hasn't it in her! She will be false to you whenever she takes the whim! She will lead you through hell!"

"You don't understand. I would _go_ through hell to be with her!"

Tennelly's words rang through the room like a knell, and Courtland could say no more. There was silence in the room. Courtland watched his friend's haggard face anxiously. There were deep lines of agony about his mouth and dark circles under his eyes.

Suddenly Tennelly lifted his hand and laid it on his friend's. "Thanks, Court. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it all more than you know. But this is my job. I guess I've got to undertake it! And, _man_! can't you see I've _got_ to believe her?"

"I suppose you have, Nelly. God help you!"

When Courtland got back to the seminary he found a letter from Mother Marshall.