He walked on for a little way, and at length, with a great sigh, he began to speak again, answering her first appeal for advice.

“I think that your prophet is mad or false, that his Mormonism is utter folly, but you knew that I thought that long ago.  As to this story your husband has told you, I am bound to say that it has happened before in the world’s history many times that men have seen, or thought they saw, a man rise into the air.  In my opinion it is not the indication of a sound mind when men see such things, and I feel sure that such a phenomenon, fact or delusion, whatever it may be, cannot bear any relation to the religious life.  My advice to you is—­ah, Susannah, I can say it truly in the sight of God and of my own conscience—­my advice to you is to be quit of such men and such scenes, but I dare not keep back from you the truth that this one story, so far from lessening my confidence in your husband’s probity or in Smith’s, has rather increased it; for, being very ignorant men, they could not have heard of these stories that I have told you, for I have read them only in rare books; that they have reproduced the same incident seems rather to prove that they have by accident stumbled upon the same fact—­whether a dizziness of the eyes, or an affection of the brain, or an actual counteraction of gravity, I cannot tell.”

She listened, drinking in each slow word.  After all, then, to-day was just like yesterday, and that which she had to decide was as to the reasonableness of the whole new doctrine, as to her willingness to live among such scenes and such men.

There had been no sudden madness or deceit to give her reason for sudden revolt (perhaps her heart said excuse instead of reason).

Ephraim had grown very pale.  After he had watched her for a while, he said with a sad smile, “You will not come home with me to-day, Susannah?”

“I must think over all this again, Ephraim.  I don’t know how these things can be, but what you admit is very strange.”

He knew from her tone that the die was cast; he had no heart to discuss the laws that govern marvels.

“If at any time, any hour of the day or night, you should wish to come to us, Susannah, the door is open.”

“You have been very kind, Ephraim.  There is not much use in my trying to say anything about how good you are, but—­” She stopped, thinking of her recovered confidence in his character and her husband’s; in this thought she experienced an elevation of the spirits, a new hopefulness, which, after the dreary blank of the morning’s outlook, was like sunshine after rain.  With this elevation the religious habit of thought which she had learned from Halsey intermingled.  “O Ephraim,” she cried, “I believe that God sent you to give me back my faith.”

He had nothing more to say after that.  He rode away leaving her standing upon the tawny carpet of the fallen leaf, standing in the pink sunshine under naked trees, and looking after him with tears of gratitude in her eyes.  Ephraim looked back once, but not again.