“It can be but a slight flesh wound,” said Ephraim mechanically.

She looked first where he was gazing, and saw that some distance down the road Halsey was stepping into a chaise.  Another man took the seat beside him and they drove away.

Then she looked at Ephraim.  He did not appear as though he felt his guilt; he had the mien rather of one who was striving bravely to endure hardship.  Then indeed she felt that the gulf of thought must yawn wide between them; she could even yet have pitied Ephraim’s contrition, but he was not contrite.  In indignation she retired, sitting in the privacy of her little bedroom.

It was a strange letter, not alone because the ink was blurred by blood that, still warm, soaked it through in parts, but because, coming from a young man to a maid, in the first flush of her strength and beauty, it offered love and marriage, giving only as his reason, urging only as her motive, the service of God.

“If,” the letter read, “thou canst see thy way, dear friend, to hold fast that thou hast in the house of thy friends, if thou canst see thy way, by steadfast confession and by the grace of thy demeanour, to strive among them for their conversion, it would be well while thou art still so young to remain with them for a time—­at least so I think.  But our prophet thinks, and I also greatly desire to think, that the strain upon thy faith would be too great, that thou mightst fail; and remembering that it has been revealed to him that our union has been sealed in heaven, he thinks that thou wouldst do well to commit thy tender life now to my keeping.”

The phrase “and I greatly desire to think” was almost as strong as any in a long letter to tell which way his delight would lie, and Susannah’s was not a mind upon which this indication of reserve force was thrown away.  She trusted, vaguely in thought but implicitly in heart, to that which lay behind—­something which did not alarm her, which in her inner vision wore no warm nor obtrusive colouring, but which she knew to be intense and of enduring quality.  And she saw herself alone, beaten by adverse winds and without other shelter.

Halsey touched upon the fact that Smith and his disciples (he did not say himself) had suffered greatly from yesterday’s ill-usage, and said that, having given their message to the people, they were that day leaving for a place called Fayette, in Seneca county, where it had previously been determined that the new church should be organised.  He himself would wait either until Susannah saw her way to come with him, or until he knew that she was at peace, having chosen of her own accord to remain.  He would bring a chaise, in which she could travel if she would, near her uncle’s house at dawn upon the next morning.  He would take her, he said, to the house where the Smiths were in Fayette, but it was implied through all the letter that the mystic marriage which Smith had solemnised was considered by Halsey as valid, and that if she joined her material fortunes now to those of the persecuted sect, it would be as his wife.