ced in acutest pain.
"You have no right to taunt me so. Else you can't know what you have
meant to me. Oh, you were all the world, child--you, of your own dear
self--you would have been all the wives in the world to me--there are
many, many of you, and all in a heavenly one--"
"Oh, forgive me, dearest," she cried, and put out a little gloved hand
to comfort him. "I know, I know--all the sweetness and goodness of your
love, believe me. See, I have kept always by me the little Bible you
gave me on my birthday--I have treasured it, and I know it has made me a
better girl, because it makes me always think of your goodness--but I
couldn't have gone there, Joel--and it does seem as if you need not have
gone--and that marrying is so odious--"
"You shall see how little you had to fear of that doctrine which God has
seen fit to reveal to these good men. I tell you now, Prue, I shall wed
no woman but you. Nor am I giving you up. Don't think it. I am doing my
duty and trusting God to bring you to me. I know He will do it--I tell
you there is the spirit of some strange, awful strength in me, which
tells me to ask what I will and it shall be given--to seek to do
anything, how great or hard soever, and a giant's, a god's strength will
rest in me. And so I know you will come. You will always think of me
so,--waiting for you--somehow, somewhere. Every day you must think it,
at any idle moment when I come to your mind; every night when you waken
in the dark and silence, you must think, 'Wherever he is, he is waiting
for me, perhaps awake as I am now, praying, with a power that will
surely draw me.' You will come somehow. Perhaps, when I reach winter
quarters, you will have changed your mind. One never knows how God may
fashion these little providences. But He will bring you safe to me out
of that Gentile perdition. Remember, child, God has set his hand in
these last days to save the human family from the ruins of the fall, and
some way, He alone knows how, you will come to me and find me waiting."
"As if you needed to wait for me when I am here now ready for you,
willing to be taken!"
"Don't, don't, dear! There are two of me now, and one can't stand the
pain. There is a man in me, sworn to do a man's work like a man, and
duty to God and the priesthood has big chains around his heart dragging
it across the river. But, low, now--there is a little, forlorn boy in
me, too--a poor, crying, whimpering, babyish little boy, who dreamed
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