It was indeed a strange experience, a strange time and place for the social debut of this beautiful woman.  Smith had calculated well when in her youth he had told her that her beauty would not diminish but increase until her prime was past, but she very modestly inferred that she might have passed, as heretofore, without much notice, if an agitation concerning her had not urged to admiration a band of men who were fast growing luxurious and pleasure-loving, and she knew that Smith was the author of that agitation.

It appeared to Susannah more dignified to ignore than to upbraid.  She secretly laughed, she secretly cried with vexation, but she desired to leave the place without betraying her recognition of the homage offered.

She sought to discuss her plan for departure with Emma, but Emma’s manner had changed to her.  It was not jealousy so much as constraint that she showed, as if secretly persuaded into unusual reticence.  Susannah then asked Smith for such a sum of money as he should consider to be a right acknowledgment of the property Halsey had given to the Church.  At this Smith looked greatly aggrieved, and withdrew muttering that he would consider her request.

The only sign of this consideration which she immediately received was a gift of showily-bound books, and a rich shawl which he had fetched from New York.

Susannah’s career as the queen of Nauvoo society came to a swift end, for she determinedly retired into seclusion.  This was not because the men who paid court to her were all ignoble.  Among the officers of the Church or of the Legion there were not few who were wholesome and friendly companions, or who, like her early Danite friend, the Apostle Heber, had frank modest eyes, incapable of any enthusiasms that were not religious.  But in her long companionship with Angel Halsey Susannah had had her soul deep dyed in a delicate hue of Quaker sentiment.  She could not admit for a moment that conscious display of personal charm was consonant with dignity.

She again sought friendly intercourse with Emma.

“There ain’t no use in opposing the Lord,” said Emma excitedly.  “If the Lord, as Joseph says, has given you beauty and wants to set you to be a star, or a Venus; or whatever he calls it, in Nauvoo, I don’t see that there’s any good your talking of going away.  I guess the Lord’ll have his own way.”

Susannah remembered how before her marriage the bigness of the authority quoted had confused her as to the truth of the message.  “Ah!  Emma, Emma,” she cried, taking the fat, comfortable hand in her own, “if in the first days I had offered a little more humility, a little more love, to those to whom I owed duty, I should never have believed what you told me about the ‘Lord’s way,’ but I have learned by hard experience, and I do not believe you now, Emma.”  She spoke the name in quicker tone, as if recalling her companion to common sense.  “Emma,” she repeated the name with all the tenderness she could muster, “don’t you know that it is better for me to go away—­better for you, better for us all?”