Noting how the idea of her violent death wrung his heart, she went on pleading with him.  She quoted the exalted character of his early visions, reminding him of the hour when the angel had shown him the dark furnace of temptations through which he must pass.  At this he was visibly stirred; the angelic vision of warning seemed to be again before his eyes.  He roused himself, speaking in that tone of voice in which, when he rarely used it, she recognised his best spirit.  “Sister, thou hast always been to me as Isaac to Abraham; for in the beginning when I was poor and alone and had nought in the world save the revelation which the Lord had given, and was tempted to doubt, then I saw thee and prayed that thou shouldst be given me for a sign; and behold when I put forth my whole strength to desire thee, thou didst come as a moth to the light, burning thy beautiful wings of youth and joy.  But I said, ’It is well, for that which she has lost shall be restored to her with usury,’ and I knew in my heart that our brother Angel Halsey would not live long, and that thou wouldst forget thy sorrow for him.  But I swear unto thee that thou hast never been to me as other women, but, as I said unto thee just now, like the voice of the angel.”

She never knew how far he was entirely under his own control when the tendency to a state of trance was upon him, but she was anxious to take advantage of the better mood.

She said, “And now what is required of you is that you should give me up.  No blessing” (she spoke strongly), “no blessing can come to you or to your people until you do this one right thing.”

He was again looking not at her but at the blank space of the shadowed wall, and as if the wall was not there and his look went far beyond it.

“You have loosened the bloodhounds and set them on my track,” she cried.

He did not speak.

“You—­you alone will be guilty of my murder, for, I tell you, if you do not take me, I will go alone and meet my death.”

His head sank upon his breast with a groan such as a dumb creature in the utmost pain might give.  Almost immediately, to her surprise, he went out.

She was left alone.  She was under the impression that Smith had gone to do her bidding, but she could not be sure.  No faith in angelic vision, no spell of psychic warfare, relieved the situation for her.  The external evidences of some crisis which he had undergone only produced in her repulsion.  Now, as ever since the temporary delusion that accompanied her baptism, Susannah endeavoured to possess her soul free from that sense of touch with mysterious powers which had worked such havoc with the sanity of the members of this sect.

From the window she saw the prophet crossing the road in the direction of his stables.  He went, it was true, with slow, dreamy gait, but steadily.  Strange mixture that he was of sanity and shrewdness, mysticism and grosser evil, he was at that moment her only star of hope.  She paced the room unable to forecast the happenings of the next hour, yet supposing that her very life depended upon its content.  The sudden joy that had come to her this morning joined with her fear, and produced panic of heart.