Ephraim never perceived the nature of her difficulty.  He thought she questioned the earnestness of life.  He leaned back against the jamb of the chimney, vainly trying to dispel his anger and bring his mind under the command of reason.  He looked at Susannah steadily; she was somewhat pale with weariness and excitement; she could never be other than beautiful.  How perfect was the moulding of the strong firm chin, of the curving nostrils!  The breadth of the cheek bone, the height and breadth of the brow, beautiful as they were in their pink and white tinting, conveyed to him almost more strongly the sense of mental completeness than of outward beauty.  He did not dare to look at her questioning eyes; his glance travelled over the amber ringlets, damp and tossed just now, drooping as if to say “Susannah is lonely and perplexed, and she needs your help.”  Ephraim, proud, and mortified to think how ill he compared with her, laughed fiercely within himself.  This was a young woman of distinction, and just now she knew it so little that she sat looking up with respect at his ill-conditioned self.  How long would that last?  How long would she remember any word that he chanced to say to her?

“Susannah, I think you are very ignorant.  Were you never taught anything when you were a little girl?”

“My father and his friends were always polite to me.”  She spoke with grave, rather than offended, dignity.

“She is entirely sweet,” he said to himself; “she will never answer me in anger.”  Then he went on aloud, “And I am not polite; I am ill-trained and ill-bred.  Well, listen, Susannah.  Whatever my mother may or may not tell you about my peculiar opinions, whatever I choose to believe or to do, remember this, that I tell you that you have a soul to be eternally lost or saved, and it behoves you to walk carefully and concern yourself about your salvation.”  There was a vibration of intense warning in his voice.  He was thinking of the life that might be so noble if will and reason sided with God, and of the snares that the world lays for beauty, and the light way in which beauty might walk into them; and, as with all dreamy minds, he was too absorbed in his thought to know how little it shone through the veil in which he wrapped it.

Susannah grew a shade paler.  She had struggled in a blind child-fashion to maintain a religion that would embrace her manifold life, but now it appeared that, after all, Ephraim endorsed the general view; his refusal to comply openly with it came of wilfulness, not unbelief.  The stronghold of her peace was gone.  “My papa never spoke to me about religion in that way, but I don’t think he believed that.”

Ephraim thought of the weak and reckless young father, of the careless life broken suddenly by death.

“He has learned the truth now,” he said shortly.

After a pause, in which she did not speak, he betook himself to his own rooms, leaving Susannah to the companionship of the lonely house, the howling wind, the gathering night, and a new fear of a state eternal and infernal, into which she might so easily slip.  Ephraim said so, and he would never have proclaimed what he would not comply with unless its truth were very sure.