Now when she asked for the paper, Darling felt that the ice was beginning to break, and gave what seemed to him genial encouragement.

“First time that you’ve asked for anything but daily rations, Sister Halsey; glad to see you plucking up heart.  The living God giveth us all things richly to enjoy.”  He repeated the last words in an unctuous drawl while he was looking for the paper, “richly to—­enjoy.  Well now, I was thinking we had some with a black border on it, but you’re more than welcome to such as there is.”

The stores indeed were scanty enough; food, cloth, household utensils, a little stationery, a large pile of devotional books, were arranged in meagre order in the shed used as a warehouse.  Darling had as yet scarcely respectable clothes to wear, but Susannah was astonished only at the energy that had in a few days collected so much, at the order and patient kindliness which ruled in this poverty-stricken administration.  Already those who could work paid into the common store, and those who had lost all had but to state their needs to have them supplied as well as might be.

“One, two, three—­will three sheets be enough, Sister Halsey?  You’ve been hearing, I suppose, that Mr. Smith is going to be moved to the town of Boome, and that he is going to be allowed to get his letters now?  He’d be real cheered to hear from you, although”—­he added this with decent haste—­“it will be a great grief to him to hear of your loss!”

“Is he well?” she asked.

“The State authorities are in a fine to-do about him, I suppose you know, sister, for they can’t find a single charge to bring him to trial on.  You bet the trial would have been on long ago if they’d had a single leg to stand on.  Anything else that I can serve you with to-day?  We’ve got some new women’s shawls and hats come in.  Won’t you just step here and have a look at them?  No?  Well, next time; but there ain’t one of our women as doesn’t want one of them new bonnets.”

Susannah went out into the spring on the outskirts of the town.  The birds were singing; everywhere the dandelions swelled out their happy tufted breasts to the sunshine; even a long worm that she noticed crawling lazily in the heat spoke to her of enjoyment of some sort.  Her own heart leaped, and she thought it was in answer to the spring.  She forgot the dire fates with which she had been grappling, forgot to hate and to grieve.

In the small wooden room that she shared with Elvira, while the invalid slept, she wrote to Ephraim, telling him all that had befallen her.  She confessed to Ephraim the passion of hatred which had long tormented her, but she added, “To-day I do not feel it; to-day, with the sweet voices of the birds everywhere in my ears, I feel that if I could be beside you again you could teach me to forgive as my husband forgave, for I do know to-day that in forgiveness alone is the true triumph, the only healing.  I am more one with my husband’s sect now than I ever was in heart and hope.  I long to see it triumphant; I long to see its enemies abashed; but I will leave this people and come back to you, if you will have me, for with regard to their religious faith my life with them is a lie.”