She tried to think what Everett’s love meant to her, but she found it impossible to get beyond the one idea that she was to be unfaithful to the trust that the people of Zanah had put in her. She did not shrink from facing the change in her position in the colony, but she could not understand what her future would be. She recalled that Everett had taken it for granted she would leave Zanah, but she knew she could not desert her father, even though a greater love than that which she bore for him might call her away. She was not sad, however, for underneath her new anxieties there was the consciousness of the revelation of love, the recognition of divinity that was so different from the one to which she had looked forward since her childhood. It gradually came over her that the inspiration she had felt came through a human medium, and not directly from heaven. She fell upon her knees before the low table that held her little German Bible. She tried to pray that she might know the will of God, but she could not bring herself to plead that she would have power to cast out from her heart the human love which had brought to her life the holy exaltation she had hoped to obtain through rigid conformity to the creed of Zanah.
Walda went out of the house of the women and stood in the little street, in which she felt suddenly that she was a stranger. She turned her steps towards the hill, for she obeyed the impulse to go to her father. Wilhelm Kellar was sitting in the window whence Walda had looked so many times at the far-off bluffs. He was reading his Bible, and as Walda entered the room he was mildly rebuking Piepmatz, who was singing the doxology and the love-song, mingled in such a medley as was never before heard from the throat of any bird.
“Peace be with thee, daughter,” he said, taking off his horn spectacles and stretching out his thin hand to her.
Walda clasped his hands, and her eyes fell beneath his glance. “Thou art feeling better, I hope?” she said, sinking upon a stool that was just beneath Piepmatz’s cage.
“The knowledge that the day of the Untersuchung is so near giveth me new life,” declared the old man. “To-day I am full of gratitude because the Lord hath kept thee safe from the wiles of men. I have given thanks unto the Lord that thou art to be the prophetess.”
Walda’s face flushed and then became pale. Her heart beat so that she could not answer.
“Come near to me, Walda,” her father said. “I would tell thee that thou hast crowned my life with happiness, that thou hast atoned for the sin of the mother who bore thee.”
Walda knelt before him and hid her face upon his knee.
“Nay, nay, father,” she cried, “I am unworthy of thy trust. I am but a weak woman such as thou sayest my mother was.”
“It is right that thou shouldst feel humble, my daughter,” the old man replied, putting both hands upon her head. “But thou hast not sinned in deceiving those that trust thee. Thou hast not known the temptations of a human love.”