She suddenly shrank from the grandeur of judging of him, to the measure of her need of his forbearance. “Oh, why can't you let David alone? What's he ever done to you?”
“What have I ever done to him?” Dylks demanded, temporizing on her ground.
“Why can't you let Jane alone?”
He gave his equine snort, as if the sense of his power could best vent itself so. “Why can't she let me alone? That girl bothers me worse than all the other women in Leatherwood put together. She won't let me let her alone.”
“She was all right before you came. Why can't you let her go back to Hughey Blake?”
“Hughey Blake? Oh! Then it wasn't—” A light of malign intelligence shone in his eyes. “Well, I haven't got anything against Hughey Blake.”
“Oh, if you'd only let her go back to Hughey! If you'd only let her alone, I'd—”
“You'd what?” He bounded toward her, and at her recoil he laughed and said, “I didn't mean to scare you.”
“I wasn't scared. You can't scare me, Joseph Dylks. It's past that, long ago, with you and me. But if I only knowed what you was up to—what you would really take to let David alone; to let her go back to Hughey Blake—But there ain't any pity in you!”
“Don't I tell you I'm full of pity? Look here, Nancy; I don't ask you to come with me, to be one with me, to go halves in the godhead, all at once. It's been step by step with me: first exhorter, then prophet, then disciple, then the Son, then the Father: but it's been as easy! You don't know how faith, the faith of the elect, helps along; and you would have that from the beginning; they would take you on my word, you wouldn't have to say or do anything. But that's not what I'm expecting now,” he hurried to add, smiling at the cloud of refusal in her face. “I'm not fooling; all I ask now is to have you come and see me do a miracle at Brother Hingston's to-night. I'll do two miracles if you'll come, and one will be sending Jane Gillespie away from me and back to Hughey Blake. You'll want to see that, even if you don't want to see me turn a bolt of cloth into seamless raiment by the touch of my hand.”