The pleasure faded into embarrassment, but she had seen it.

"You have a good and a bad nature struggling within you, Mr. Smith. By
all that we have suffered, you and I, since the day that by some
mysterious power you forced me to come to your baptism" (she stammered
in her eagerness), "by all that we have suffered, by that sympathy which
we have at times felt for one another, assert yourself now. Do this one
right thing for me, and in all the future I will try to remember only
the good in your life and not the bad."

But he stood so long still looking steadfastly before him that she began
to fear that, unnerved by his last night's fit of fury, he was ready to
pass into one of those visionary trances which had been common in his
younger days.

She touched the sleeve of his coat. "I do not know if Mr. Heber's threat
could be serious, but it frightened me, and I know that I shall be safe
on the road to Carthage if you take me. Go, get your horses and take me
away yourself."

He looked at her pitifully, slipping into the style of his religious
moods. "Thou sayest truly, sister, that there is none but I who could do
this thing, for since in mine anger last night, fearing that I had no
strength of my own to keep thee by me, I denounced thee to the council,
there is no safety for thy life beyond the boundary of Nauvoo." He
winced here, as if seeing what he suggested.

Noting how the idea of her violent death wrung his heart, she went on
pleading with him. She quoted the exalted character of his early
visions, reminding him of the hour when the angel had shown him the dark
furnace of temptations through which he must pass. At this he was
visibly stirred; the angelic vision of warning seemed to be again before
his eyes. He roused himself, speaking in that tone of voice in which,
when he rarely used it, she recognised his best spirit. "Sister, thou
hast always been to me as Isaac to Abraham; for in the beginning when I
was poor and alone and had nought in the world save the revelation which
the Lord had given, and was tempted to doubt, then I saw thee and prayed
that thou shouldst be given me for a sign; and behold when I put forth
my whole strength to desire thee, thou didst come as a moth to the
light, burning thy beautiful wings of youth and joy. But I said, 'It is
well, for that which she has lost shall be restored to her with usury,'
and I knew in my heart that our brother Angel Halsey would not live
long, and that th