“You know that I wouldn’t like that, Sister Halsey; but when you come to think of it you’ll see that it wouldn’t serve your turn neither.  It would only need for a few of us to say you was crazy and the whole town ’ud see the more reason for not letting you go.  Moreover, it would be a monstrous injustice to me.  When have I failed to do anything that I ever promised you?  Did I ever promise to let you apostatise?  I guess, Sister Halsey, that you’re excited, and if you just think over things for a day or two you would see that we’re not so bad as you think.  But, anyway, this ain’t just the place for us to have a talk together.”

When Smith moved on to lead her back to her own rooms, she followed quietly until they stood together in her parlour, the scene of their last quarrel.

“And now,” said Susannah, “you understand very well that it is no sudden intention of mine to go, that it is my irrevocable decision.  I have this morning had my very life threatened; and I see now that unless you command that it should be respected I should very possibly be in danger if I went away alone.  You have offered again and again to drive me in your carriage; I will accept the offer now.  Get out your own horses, and drive me yourself to Carthage.”

She saw a look of faint pleasure steal over his face.  He liked to stand there in the quiet room listening while she spoke with some evidence of trust.  The pleasure faded into embarrassment, but she had seen it.

“You have a good and a bad nature struggling within you, Mr. Smith.  By all that we have suffered, you and I, since the day that by some mysterious power you forced me to come to your baptism” (she stammered in her eagerness), “by all that we have suffered, by that sympathy which we have at times felt for one another, assert yourself now.  Do this one right thing for me, and in all the future I will try to remember only the good in your life and not the bad.”

But he stood so long still looking steadfastly before him that she began to fear that, unnerved by his last night’s fit of fury, he was ready to pass into one of those visionary trances which had been common in his younger days.

She touched the sleeve of his coat.  “I do not know if Mr. Heber’s threat could be serious, but it frightened me, and I know that I shall be safe on the road to Carthage if you take me.  Go, get your horses and take me away yourself.”

He looked at her pitifully, slipping into the style of his religious moods.  “Thou sayest truly, sister, that there is none but I who could do this thing, for since in mine anger last night, fearing that I had no strength of my own to keep thee by me, I denounced thee to the council, there is no safety for thy life beyond the boundary of Nauvoo.”  He winced here, as if seeing what he suggested.