“I am here, Susannah”—­in his battle to speak Ephraim economised words—­“to ask you to come back with me.”

Susannah considered.  It would be perhaps the best thing that she could do after she had spoken her mind to Angel.  He would not ask her to remain to join in a service she loathed.  But when she thought of her aunt, and of the voice of an outraged Puritan neighbourhood, her heart naturally failed her.

“I cannot.”

“Is this man more to you—­I do not say than the ties of kindred, for that is natural—­but more to you than the obligation to live a life of reason and duty?”

“No.”  Susannah spoke the answer aloud because it arose so simply and strongly within her.  Had she not just come to a crisis in which her desire to abide by reason proved far stronger than the feeling which bound her to Halsey?  And yet, as she thought of his love and his tenderness for her, she felt only pity for him, even if he had told a lie.

Ephraim had grown calmer, but at the clear denial his heart again beat against the breath he was trying to draw.  She did not love Halsey then! she was not married to him!  He could conceive of nothing that could have brought that word and tone to Susannah’s lips if she were bound.

“Does not duty and reason, does not even mere sanity, call upon you to come back with me, Susannah, and spend your life where you can exercise the gifts God has given you among those who abide by law and order?”

“Perhaps, Ephraim, it is so; but I am too great a coward.  Think of the shame that I should have to endure from my aunt, and all the world would taunt me with my folly and madness.  I think it would kill what little good there is in me.  For although I should be willing to suffer if I have done wrong, yet there would be no use in going where my punishment would be greater than I could bear.”

He was shocked to think of the days that had elapsed before he had come to her.  She had suffered much before she could speak in this way, and when he saw how mild and sad she was, and, above all, rational, he longed to comfort her as he would comfort a child with caresses and the promise of future joys.  He could give her neither, because he believed that she cared for neither caress nor joy from his hand.  There was something he could offer—­all that he had to give that she could take, but the offer was so hard to make that he prefaced it.

“A way might be found by which you could return to our house, Susannah, and be troubled by no spoken reproach, and you could live down that which was unspoken.”  He paused a minute, and then said, “But I would know first that you leave all that pertains to your life here freely.  You have found it true, what is so much reported, that the Mormons follow wicked practices?”

“No, oh no, Ephraim; that is not true—­mad, deluded perhaps, but not wicked.  The stories of wickedness told are malicious even where there is a colour of truth, and for the most part there is none.  In the matter of daily life they abide by the laws of God and man, and nothing else is taught.”