oarse and frivolous talk that went
on at the church meetings, and Elvira was privy to it through that old
fool, her husband. How could she endure him!

"O Elvira, in the last few days I have realised as I did not before that
riches are making fools of these men. How glad I am that my husband died
before he knew that this was to be the reward of his lifework and his
prayers!"

Elvira stopped dancing. The mystical side of her character now, as
ever, came forward suddenly in the midst of her other interests. The
sunshine was bright in the gaudy room. A tiny spaniel, which Elvira's
senile slave had procured for her, lay on a red cushion in its full
beam, looking more like a toy than a living thing. When Elvira stopped
dancing her flounces settled themselves with an audible rustle, and her
thin delicately-cut face looked at Susannah from out its frame of curled
hair and gold ornaments like the face of a spirit imprisoned in some
unseemly place.

"Heaven help us, Susannah," she cried shrilly, "if you call Nauvoo the
reward of Angel's prayers. Look!" she cried, pointing out of the window,
"see how the new temple rises; how its white walls shine in the sun! We
are putting thousands upon thousands of dollars into it. It will be the
grandest building this side of the Alleghany mountains." She let her
small jewelled hand, with its pointing finger, fall suddenly, "and there
shall not be left one stone of it upon another, for the House of God is
not made with hands."

"I see little signs of its foundations here." Susannah spoke with fire.
"Treachery and tyranny are poor bricks."

"Child, its foundations are in the whole earth, here and everywhere, in
every nation and kindred. Men like Angel Halsey sow wheat; other people
have sown tares. The tares happen to be in blossom just now here in
Nauvoo." She seemed to forget her seriousness as suddenly, for again
she spun round upon the centre of her rose, singing her little musical
refrain.

Susannah made one more appeal of the sort that she had made so often
before Elvira's marriage.

"You will not come away with me, Elvira? I do not like to leave you
here; you have not been yourself since Angel died. You are not bound to
this man because you were not sane enough to make a valid choice."

It was plain speaking, but it did not ruffle Elvira's composure in the
slightest. She laughed and began to caress her spaniel. "Mad. Oh yes, we
are all mad, and growing madder, but it is becaus