these were what Gabriella had always been taught to look for first
in a man.

In many other ways than in his faith and doubt David was a new type
of man to her. He was the most religious, the only religious, one
she had ever known--a new spiritual growth arising out of his
people as a young oak out of the soil. Had she been familiar with
the Greek idea, she might have called him a Kentucky autochthon. It
was the first time also that she had ever encountered in a
Kentuckian the type of student mind--that fitness and taste for
scholarship which sometimes moves so unobtrusively and rises so
high among that people, but is usually unobserved unless discovered
pre-eminent and commanding far from the confines of the state.

Touching his scepticism she looked upon him still as she had
thought of him at first,--as an example of a sincere soul led
astray for a time only. Strange as were his views (and far stranger
they seemed in those years than now), she felt no doubt that when
the clouds marshalled across his clear vision from the minds of
others had been withdrawn, he would once more behold the Sun of
Righteousness as she did. Gabriella as by intuition reasoned that a
good life most often leads to a belief in the Divine Goodness; that
as we understand in others only what we are in ourselves, so it is
the highest elements of humanity that must be relied upon to
believe in the Most High: and of David's lofty nature she possessed
the whole history of his life as evidence.

Her last act, then, the night before had been, in her nightgown, on
her knees, to offer up a prayer that he might be saved from the
influences of false teachers and guided back to the only Great One.