Something, somewhere was holding him back. He did not know why, he did not see for how long. He simply could not make that decision to-night! He must await permission before moving.
Possibly the trip to the factory the next day, which he had promised to take, might give him some light in the matter. Possibly he would find counsel somewhere. But where? He thought of Gila. He took out a lovely photograph of her that she had given him before he left her Sunday night--a charming, airy, idealistic thing of earth and fire that had lain innocently open upon the library table where some one (?) had left it earlier in the day. He stood it up on his desk and studied the spirited will-o'-the-wisp face! Then he turned away sadly and shook his head. She would not understand. Not yet! Some time, when he had told her about the Presence--but not yet! She could not understand because she had not seen for herself.
Tennelly and his uncle went down-town in the morning and took lunch together. Courtland was to meet them at the factory at three o'clock, but somehow he missed them. Perhaps it was intention. Courtland went early. He wanted to see things for himself; went alone first. Afterward he could go the rounds to satisfy Mr. Thomas, but first he would see it alone.
Then, after all, it was the Rev. Robert Burns who met him at the door and took him through the factory, bent on seeing some parishioner on an errand of love. And there was that strange sense of the Presence having been there before them, walking about among the machinery, looking at the tired face of one, sorrowing over the wrinkles in another forehead, pitying the weary hands that toiled, blessing the faithful! It reminded him of the morgue in that. For a minute he began to think that if the Presence was here in this peculiar sense, then, of course, it was an indication that he was needed here to work for these people, as Uncle Ramsey had tried with strange worldly wisdom to make him understand. But then, suddenly, he caught a glimpse of the face of the little minister, white under its freckles, with a righteous wrath as he fixed his gaze sternly on the door at the end of the long room. He looked up quickly to hear the click of a key in a lock as the foreman passed from one room to another.