In spite of this official discouragement, Evan Hughes increased. The revival, unlike those epidemics of disease which afflict the body, spread steadily eastward. Chapel Green with its sober, bucolic population, had made the mildest of beginnings. At Mainstone half the vicar’s congregation thronged the chapel. People walked over from Lesswardine on the Sunday evening in little laughing groups and returned in silence with a Roman segregation of the sexes. Those who scoffed had such a bad time of it that they held their tongues. Among the victims of this collective exaltation was Susie Hind. No doubt the violence of her renewed passion for Abner had thrown her into an emotional state. Abner was now absorbed in it, and content to be absorbed, seeing that in this way he purchased forgetfulness; but Susie had to run the risk of discovery or worse until her nerves were all on edge. At first Abner could not make out what was the matter with her. One Sunday night she cried and cried in his arms and would not tell him why. For the rest of the week she brooded on the extremity of her sin; then, with the same queer directness that had driven her to confront Mary Malpas some time before, she sought an interview with the evangelist and laid her confession before him. He turned away from her. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I cannot hear these things. My ears are full of them. “_Go and sin no more_!” and remember me when you pray.’ She went home burning but humiliated, and gave herself up to an ecstasy of self-abasement in prayer. When the men joked with her in the bar at night she would not listen to them. Next Sunday she went again to the chapel and wept. She knew that after dark that night Abner would come and call her. She loved him, but it seemed to her that her immortal soul was more precious than mortal love, and here were two souls to be saved. She lay stiff in bed waiting for his signal, compelling herself to be cold. A clod struck the window-pane. She clasped her hands in an attitude of prayer and lay like a stone. Again he signalled to her. She dared not lie there any longer for fear he should become impatient and waken her father. She slipped on some clothes and came to the door. ‘I can’t see you, Abner,’ she whispered hurriedly. ‘I can’t let you in. I can’t . . . don’t ask me.’ He thought she had taken leave of her senses. ‘What the devil’s up with you?’ he said. She shook her head and would have closed the door on him, but he put his foot in it. ‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh, don’t!’