She couldn't have intended to shoot." From Susannah's heart a great cloud was lifted.

She felt no confused need to readjust her thoughts; rather it was that in a moment her apprehension of Ephraim's character slipped easily from some abnormal strain into normal pleasure.
She pressed her hands to her breast as if fondling some delight.
"Forgive me," she said, "but I am so glad, oh, so very glad." She drew a long breath as if inhaling not the autumn but the new sweetness of spring.
So they went on a little way, he somewhat shy because of her emotion, she meditating again, and this question pressed.
"And you think," she asked, "that your mother would receive me if I went back with you?
that I could live at peace with her ?" "Do you think that whatever I might do she would ever try to shoot _me_ ?" he asked with half a smile.

"Do you think that she would ever, by word or deed, do anything that would hurt _me_ ?" "Never." Susannah said the word as a matter of course.
"Or that my father would ever deny me anything that I seriously asked for, or that he knew my happiness depended upon ?" "No, surely not; but, Ephraim--" "Oh," he continued, growing distress in his voice, "Susannah, is there any place else in the whole world that you can go for shelter and comfort but to our house?
You have spoken of this madness and delusion; you are satisfied that you must leave--" He had meant to say "this man," but he was too shy, and he faltered--"that you must leave these people ?" She cast her eyes far in among the trunks of the close-growing trees, upon one side and then upon another, as if looking for a way of escape.
Yes, surely her faith in Angel's creed had been hurt beyond recovery, and she must free herself, but how?
She dallied with Ephraim's offer of asylum because she could think of no other.
"Yes," she said mechanically; "yes, but how can I ?" "Oh, my dear cousin, don't you see that it is wrong for you to stay one day longer here?
If you believed at first that the bond that united you to this man was binding, you do not believe it now.

You were so young when you went, yet the thing cannot be undone on that account.

You were so beautiful that I had hoped a great and prosperous life lay before you.