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"Why, Lewis Hall! What do you mean!" she said, forgetting her part in her indignation. "I am a Shakeress. You've no right to speak so to me." He blinked at her through the blur of pain. "I wish you'd stay with me, Athalia, I've got a a sort of headache. Never mind about being a Shakeress just for to-night. It would be such a comfort to have you." But Athalia, with a horrified look, had left him.
"Do you know, my dear boy, there would not be so crowded or fashionable an audience to witness Racine's Athalia?" "Undoubtedly. What is the beggarly howling of an actor, compared to the roaring of the lion?" "I cannot understand how the authorities permit this Morok to fasten his panther with a chain to an iron ring in the corner of the stage. If the chain were to break?"
While Athalia, in her net cap and her gray shoulder cape buttoned close up to her chin, would dismiss the anxious affection with a peremptory "Of course not! I have bread to eat you know not of, Brother Lewis." Then she would add, didactically, some word of dogma or admonition. But she had not much time to give to Brother Lewis's salvation she was so busy in adjusting herself to her new life.
"But their idea of brotherhood is the highest kind of life!" "The only fault I have to find with it is that it isn't human," he said, mildly. He had no desire to prove or disprove anything; Athalia was looking better, just because she was interested in something, and that was enough for Lewis.
The color flew into her face. "Oh, yee; we were married eight years when I came in." He looked at her with great tenderness. "Athalia, I have to confess to you that when you came I didn't think it would last with you. I distrusted the Holy Spirit. And I came, myself, against my will, as you know. But now I begin to think you were led and perhaps you have led me."
It was in one of those moments when the mists thinned, and he knew that he was shivering over the stove instead of basking in the sunshine in his mother's room that smelled of rose-geranium leaves, that Athalia came in. She looked conscious and confused, full of a delightful embarrassment at being for once alone with him. The color was deep on her cheeks, and her eyes were starry.
"Lewis, I I want to go home." She sobbed as she spoke. He started as if she had struck him. "Lewis, Lewis, let us go home!" The flame of mystical satisfaction went out of his face as a lighted candle goes out in the wind. "There isn't any home now, Athalia," he said, with a sombre look; "there's only a house. Come in," he added, heavily; "we must talk this out."
Afterward, as they followed the cart across the field and out into the road, Athalia asked the old herb-gatherer many questions about the happiness of the community life, which he answered patiently enough. Once or twice he tried to draw into their talk the silent husband who walked at her side, but Lewis had nothing to say.
He told Athalia, passively, that he had rented the house and mill to Henry Davis; that he had settled half his capital upon her, so that she would have some money to put into the common treasury of the community; then he added that he had taken a house for himself near the settlement, and that he would hire out to the Shakers when they were haying, or do any farm-work that he could get.
The two visitors followed Brother Nathan down the room between piles of sorted herbs, and out into the sunshine again. Athalia drew a breath of ecstasy. "It's all so beautifully tranquil!" she whispered, looking about her with blue, excited eyes. "Tay and tranquillity!" Lewis said, with an amused laugh.
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