t to accuse her of this.
A certain awe of Smith came over her; he could be violent with those who
were violent, coarse and jocular with his public who could be worked
upon thus, but to her he spoke delicately, and he had shown her at times
before this that he knew her better than she knew herself.

"Sister Susannah," said Smith humbly, "it's my fault that you've become
the brainy woman that you are, for I encouraged you at book learning
(knowing as how when you found your heart 'twould shine with the more
lustre), but if you were to go and live along side of a man as is a
bookworm you'd lose your chance of this life (let alone your soul's
salvation by the apostasy which you think lightly of now). Anyhow I'd
wait if I was you till his mother asks you, for she'd be in an awful
taking if you and he were talk, talk, talking of what she didn't
understand. And he is her only son, and she is a widow."

With this last phrase, which had a good and Scriptural sound, Smith had
done.

Susannah gave him her hand in farewell, and listened gently while again
he told her, as on the night of his flight from Kirtland, that his
friendship and the friendship of his Church were always at her service.

The prophet walked down the street. A crowd of the Saints and a group
of elders were waiting for him with impatience. Darling eyed his coming
with looks gloomy and furtive, but the prophet was no longer, as on the
previous night, wrathful and pompous. He spoke aside to Darling.

"I thought it right to tell our sister Susannah Halsey that her Gentile
home had suffered bereavement. The uncle who has been as a father unto
her is dead. I have been greatly exercised in grief for her," continued
Smith, briefly and truly; and then he added, also with truth, but with
subtle suggestion, "I cannot think that further dealing with that
household could be of advantage to her, but having laid the matter
before the Lord, I was made aware that we must seek the good of all our
sisters not with regard to outward appearance or inclination of the
eyes; therefore, Brother Darling, let your motive be lowly, not having
respect unto persons," and he added with the simplicity of a child, "as
mine is."

Susannah was left with the bad picture in her mind which Smith had
sketched there. She saw herself cold to her husband, lacking in
passionate motherliness to his child, eager for the society of another
man not out of love but intellectual vanity, and cavilling als