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 then to divert the
conversation into less difficult channels, she added:--