"Once I might have thought all that Providential. I mean, seeing the faces of my professors--my judges--last, as the end of my old life; then seeing your face next--the beginning of the new." He had long used frankness like this, making no secret of himself, of her influence over him. It was embarrassing; it declared so much, assumed so much, that had never been declared or assumed in any other way. But her stripped and beaten young Samaritan was no labyrinthine courtier, bescented and bedraped and bedyed with worldliness and conventions: he came ever in her presence naked of soul. It was this that empowered her to take the measure of his feeling for her: it had its effect. David returned to his chair and looked across with a mixture of hesitancy and determination. "I have never spoken to you about my expulsion--my unbelief." After a painful pause she answered. "You must be aware that I have noticed your silence. Perhaps you do not realize how much I have regretted it." "You know why I have not?" She did not answer. "I have been afraid. It's the only thing in the world I've ever been afraid of." "Why should you have been?" "I dreaded to know how you might feel. It has caused a difficulty with every one so far. It separated me from my friends 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.