"Do you remember anything connected with that verse, Miss Hastings?" he asked, as the two entered the almost deserted back parlor.
"Indeed I do," Dora answered, eagerly. "I never forgot it, and your earnest questions about it, and I could tell you so little."
"I found out a great deal about it, though, taking the information that you gave me for a starting point, and I have reason to thank God that you ever showed me your little card. But do you know anything more of the matter now, experimentally I mean?"
Dora's voice trembled a little as she answered:
"I think—I—sometimes I hope I do. I am trying to learn a little, stumbling along slowly, with oh so many drawbacks; and do you know I think my interest in these things dates back to that stormy evening in prayer-meeting, when you asked me such queer questions? At least I thought them queer then."
No more standing aloof during that evening for Theodore Mallery. It mattered little how his clothes were cut or of what material they were made; so long as Dora Hastings walked through the rooms and chatted familiarly with him, not a girl present but stood ready to follow her example.
Later in the evening Dora said to him, hesitatingly and almost timidly:
"Mr. Mallery, I don't like you to think that I was making sport of that Bible verse. I truly know almost nothing about French, and I didn't take, the sense of it in the least until you read it."
There was another thing that the young man was very anxious to know, and that was whether her motive was mischief or kind intent when she called on him; and like the straightforward individual that he was, he asked her:
"What possessed you to suppose I could read it?"