Looking down with burning cheeks, she told him what Halsey's story about Newell Knight's levitation had been. She remembered it quite clearly and told it baldly.
Before she finished it she heard him mutter below his breath that it was very strange. She was surprised at his tone of perplexity.
"It is very strange to me," she cried, "because I know my husband, and up till now he has been so upright and, except that he believed in Joseph Smith, so sensible and wise."
"And is this all?" asked Ephraim. "If it were not for this, would you be content to go on as before?"
He had begun to walk slowly on with the horse, and she too walked. After she had answered him the long silence became oppressive, and she knew that Ephraim was suffering to a degree that she could not understand. At length when he did speak his words were most unexpected.
He was looking toward the rising sun, which was still dim and flushed with the autumn haze. "The Christ whom we all worship," he began abruptly, "each in our different way, called himself by the sacred name of Truth. Does he desire, do you think, that we must worship him by adhering to what we know to be fact, no matter what would seem to be gained by slighting facts? It is a great temptation to me to conceal from you, Susannah, a part of my book knowledge which I cannot help thinking has some bearing upon this case—how much or how little I do not know."
He walked on for a little way, and at length, with a great sigh, he began to speak again, answering her first appeal for advice.
"I think that your prophet is mad or false, that his Mormonism is utter folly, but you knew that I thought that long ago. As to this story your husband has told you, I am bound to say that it has happened before in the world's history many times that men have seen, or thought they saw, a man rise into the air. In my opinion it is not the indication of a sound mind when men see such things, and I feel sure that such a phenomenon, fact or delusion, whatever it may be, cannot bear any relation to the religious life. My advice to you is—ah, Susannah, I can say it truly in the sight of God and of my own conscience—my advice to you is to be quit of such men and such scenes, but I dare not keep back from you the truth that this one story, so far from lessening my confidence in your husband's probity or in Smith's, has rather increased it; for, being very ignorant men, they could not have heard of these stories that I have told you, for I have read them only in rare books; that they have reproduced the same incident seems rather to prove that they have by accident stumbled upon the same fact—whether a dizziness of the eyes, or an affection of the brain, or an actual counteraction of gravity, I cannot tell."
She listened, drinking in each slow word. After all, then, to-day was just like yesterday, and that which she had to decide was as to the reasonableness of the whole new doctrine, as to her willingness to live among such scenes and such men.
There had been no sudden madness or deceit to give her reason for sudden revolt (perhaps her heart said excuse instead of reason).