She smiled confidently and answered: “Thy love will dwell in my heart forever.”
He kissed her farewell, holding both her hands in his.
“I wish I could spare you the ordeal of the Untersuchung,” he exclaimed. “Why need we care for all the world?”
“Hush!” she said. “We care not for Zanah or the whole world, but if we would keep our love holy, we must be true, Stephen, to all our duties.”
After he had kissed her for the last time, she stood before the elders’ platform and looked up at the chair of the prophetess. Everett unlocked the door.
“I appreciate the opportunity you have given me of speaking to Walda Kellar,” he said, with a suavity and courtesy to which the women of the colony were so unaccustomed they did not know what it meant. They stood scowling at him until Mother Kaufmann replied:
“Thou wilt be ordered out of the colony for this day’s work.”
“If you are wise—and I am sure you are, or you would not have been chosen to attend the prophetess of Zanah—you will not make any complaints.” He bowed deferentially to all of them, and passing Walda, before whom he stopped to whisper “Farewell, until the Untersuchung,” he went out of the meeting-house.
“It must have been a message of much import that brought the stranger here,” sneered Mother Kaufmann, as she seated herself on the nearest chair.
“He hath small respect for the laws of Zanah,” declared a second watcher.