d
incapacitated him from seeking another meeting at present, the letter
went on to say, and ended with a request which was virtually a command,
that she call upon him at once.

The reading of the letter acquainted Jane Withersteen with the fact that
something within her had all but changed. She sent no reply to Bishop
Dyer nor did she go to see him. On Sunday she remained absent from the
service--for the second time in years--and though she did not actually
suffer there was a dead-lock of feelings deep within her, and the
waiting for a balance to fall on either side was almost as bad as
suffering. She had a gloomy expectancy of untoward circumstances,
and with it a keen-edged curiosity to watch developments. She had
a half-formed conviction that her future conduct--as related to her
churchmen--was beyond her control and would be governed by their
attitude toward her. Something was changing in her, forming, waiting for
decision to make it a real and fixed thing. She had told Lassiter that
she felt helpless and lost in the fateful tangle of their lives; and now
she feared that she was approaching the same chaotic condition of mind
in regard to her religion. It appalled her to find that she questioned
phases of that religion. Absolute faith had been her serenity. Though
leaving her faith unshaken, her serenity had been disturbed, and now
it was broken by open war between her and her ministers. That something
within her--a whisper--which she had tried in vain to hush had become
a ringing voice, and it called to her to wait. She had transgressed
no laws of God. Her churchmen, however invested with the power and the
glory of a wonderful creed, however they sat in inexorable judgment of
her, must now practice toward her the simple, common, Christian virtue
they professed to preach, "Do unto others as you would have others do
unto you!"

Jane Withersteen, waiting in darkness of mind, remained faithful still.
But it was darkness that must soon be pierced by light. If her faith
were justified, if her churchmen were trying only to intimidate her, the
fact would soon be manifest, as would their failure, and then she would
redouble her zeal toward them and toward what had been the best work
of her life--work for the welfare and happiness of those among whom she
lived, Mormon and Gentile alike. If that secret, intangible power closed
its toils round her again, if that great invisible hand moved here and
there and everywhere, slowly