They parted outside the door of the little office, and he kissed her for the first time since they had been married—­on the forehead.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A New Cross Taken up and an Old Enemy Forgiven

Christina would now be left alone with the cares of the house, and he knew he ought to have some one to help her.  The fever of sacrifice was also upon him.  And so he found another derelict, to whom he was sealed forever.

At a time of more calmness he might have balked at this one.  She was a cross, to be sure, and it was now his part in life to bear crosses.  But there were plenty of these, and even one vowed to a life of sacrifice, he suspected, need not grossly abuse the powers of discrimination with which Heaven had seen fit to endow him.  But he had lately been on the verge of a seething maelstrom, balancing there with unholy desire and wickedly looking far down, and the need to atone for this sin excited him to indiscretions.

It was not that this star in his crown was in her late thirties and less than lovely.  He had learned, indeed, that in the game which, for the chastening of his soul, he now played with the Devil, it were best to choose stars whose charms could excite to little but conduct of a saintlike seemliness.  The fat, dumpy figure of this woman, therefore, and her round, flat, moonlike face, her mouse-coloured wisps of hair cut squarely off at the back of her neck, were points of a merit that was in its whole effect nothing less than distinguished.

But she talked.  Her tones played with the constancy of an ever-living fountain.  Artlessly she lost herself in the sound of their music, until she also lost her sense of proportion, of light and shade, of simple, Christian charity.  Her name was Lorena Sears, and she had come in with one of the late trains of converts, without friends, relatives, or means, with nothing but her natural gifts and an abiding faith in the saving powers of the new dispensation.  And though she was so alive in her faith, rarely informed in the Scriptures, bubbling with enthusiasm for the new covenant, the new Zion, and the second coming of the Messiah, there had seemed to be no place for her.  She had not been asked in marriage, nor had she found it easy to secure work to support herself.

“She’s strong,” said Brigham, to his inquiring Elder, “and a good worker, but even Brother Heber Kimball wouldn’t marry her; and between you and me, Brother Joel, I never knew Heber to shy before at anything that would work.  You can see that, yourself, by looking over his household.”

But, after the needful preliminaries, and a very little coy hesitation on the part of the lady, Lorena Sears, spinster, native of Elyria, Ohio, was duly sealed to, for time and eternity, and became a star forever in the crown of, Joel Rae, Elder after the Order of Melchisedek in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and President of the Amalon Stake of Zion.