Then upon the gloom of his deep despondency a star had arisen.
He had heard of a young man, poor, obscure, illiterate, who had dared to come forth saying again, as St.Peter had once said, "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel." He had come far to hear the word, and, upon hearing it, he had found rest for himself and a hope for the world.
His ardour was beginning to tell upon Susannah's mind.

The desire awoke within her for some fellowship with his enthusiasm.

Stronger was the desire to receive personal recognition from the fair-faced youth.
"I am English," she repeated, "and of course I think it very wicked to add anything to the Bible; it says so in the Revelation." "That to me also was a stumbling-block for a short time; but if thou wilt consider, friend, that the Book of Mormon is the history of God's dealing with the wild races of our own continent from the time of Noah until the time of Maroni, which would be about three hundred years after the first coming of the Lord, and that this sacred history, so necessary for the instruction of us who must now dwell in the same land, could not be given until this continent was known to the world, thou wilt cease to cavil, and wilt in all humility believe that that which is done of the hand of the Lord cannot be wrong." Faith begging the question is a sight to which the eye of experience becomes accustomed, but Susannah, standing upon the threshold of life, blinked and failed to focus her vision, feeling vaguely that during the last phrase some one had turned a somersault, and that too quickly to be watched.
"Thou wilt think upon these things ?" The young Quaker stood in the storm and looked earnestly upon Susannah, who was upon her uncle's doorstep, within shelter of the brown pent house.
Susannah smiled.

It was a perfectly instinctive smile, not one self-conscious thought went behind or before.

She smiled because the young man was comely, and because she was young and wanted companionship.
"I don't know," she said with perfect frankness; "my aunt will be so vexed with me when she hears that I've been to the Smiths that I don't believe I'll be allowed to think of anything this good while." Her smile, her girlishness, seemed at last to pierce beneath the armour of his devout abstraction.