“You scare me when you look that way.  You mustn’t be so fierce.”

“I told him he didn’t know you.”

“Who didn’t know me, sir?”

“A man who said I wasn’t sure of you.”

“So you are sure of me, are you, Mr. Preacherman?  Is it because we’ve been sweethearts since so long?  But remember you’ve been much away.  I’ve seen you—­let me count—­but one little time of two weeks in three years.  You would go on that horrid mission.”

“Is not religion made up of obedience, let life or death come?”

“Is there no room for loving one’s sweetheart in it?”

“One must obey, and I am a better man for having denied myself and gone.  I can love you better.  I have been taught to think of others.  I was sent to open up the gospel in the Eastern States because I had been endowed with almost the open vision.  It was my call to help in the setting up of the Messiah’s latter-day kingdom.  Besides, we may never question the commands of the holy priesthood, even if our wicked hearts rebel in secret.”

“If you had questioned the right person sharply enough, you might have had an answer as to why you were sent.”

“What do you mean?  How could I have questioned?  How could I have rebelled against the stepping-stone of my exaltation?”

His face relaxed a little, and he concluded almost quizzically: 

“Was not Satan hurled from high heaven for resisting authority?”

She pouted, caught him by the lapels of his coat and prettily tried to shake him.

“There—­horrid!—­you’re preaching again.  Please remember you’re not on mission now.  Indeed, sir, you were called back for being too—­too—­why, do you know, even old Elder Munsel, ‘Fire-brand Munsel,’ they call him, said you were too fanatical.”

His face grew serious.

“I’m glad to be called back to you, at any rate,—­and yet, think of all those poor benighted infidels who believe there are no longer revelations nor prophecies nor gifts nor healings nor speaking with tongues,—­this miserable generation so blind in these last days when the time of God’s wrath is at hand.  Oh, I burn in my heart for them, night after night, suffering for the tortures that must come upon them—­thrice direful because they have rejected the message of Moroni and trampled upon the priesthood of high heaven, butchering the Saints of the Most High, and hunting the prophets of God like Ahab of old.”

“Oh, dear, please stop it!  You sound like swearing!” Her two hands were closing her ears in a pretty pretense.

He seemed hardly to hear her, but went on excitedly: