She gave him credit for knowing the passage by heart; she had the rudeness to interrupt.  She rose and stood before him.  All the long latent defiance which her heart had treasured against him found vent in her tone, “Very well, Mr. Smith, if that satisfied Job, it will not satisfy me.”

Smith, cast out of all his shrewd calculations as to what would win this woman, fell back upon the inner genius of that priestcraft which so often surpassed his conscious intelligence.

“What would satisfy you?” It was a simple question, and he asked it with overwhelming force.  “By the hand of trust and affection which your husband gave me; by the memory of the beautiful babe that he brought first to me for my blessing (and I laid my hand on its little warm head and blessed it); by these I claim the right to ask, Sister Halsey, what is it that in Nauvoo or in any other city would satisfy you?”

She was humiliated in her own eyes.  Alas! she had strong evidence that Ephraim’s affection, on which she had staked all earthly hope of happiness, had in some way failed.  Now under Smith’s eye all courage to hold the unrealised ideal was lost; as the fixed stars twinkle, so her faith went out for the moment of his interrogation.  Her head sank in a shame she could not confess.

While she hesitated he was looking at her shrewdly.  “You know not what.  Shall I tell you?  There is but one thing, and that is love—­the love that works, for those who are in need.  Work for the needy is love to God and man, my sister.”

He paused, looking at her with a glow of enthusiasm.  Whatever he might be to others, this man, coarse in his outer nature, but liable always to eruptions of the sensitive inward soul of the visionary, was in this woman’s presence often merely what she compelled him to be.  If she had known that this was the secret of his power over her, the spell might have been less.

“Is it not true, Sister Susannah?” he asked.

She gave the admission mechanically.

He went on, “I don’t take it at all hard that you should feel that we are none of us up to you, but feel as you do that we are beneath you, for there isn’t a lady in the place that’s equal to you in delicate ways and sense and a mind to study books; but it seems to me that that’s a reason why you should love us, Sister Halsey.  There is work for you to do; we need your guiding hand.  You say to me that I am content with horses and sumptuous living and fine raiment; and knowest thou not that there is upon my soul a great burden, even the burden of this great people, to go in and out before them and guide them aright?  I have need of thy counsel, my sister; there’s that which at this time is greatly agitating my own mind and the minds of our bishops and apostles, Sister Halsey, and it is of such nature that we cannot proclaim it openly until we know the mind of the Lord.  On all other matters we have accepted the teaching