In her blindness, in her slow recovery from utter exhaustion of mind and nerve, Susannah never thought of connecting this long-continued kindness with the fact that the old man's younger son had as yet no wife.
At first Susannah had fixed her thoughts upon an immediate return to the east, but weeks went by and she had not written to Ephraim Croom for the money that she needed.

The whole civilised world contained for her but one friend to whom she would write.
The Canadian farm, the remote country village of Manchester, and the Mormon sect--these formed her whole experience.

Her father, who had scolded and played with her; Ephraim, who had understood her and had been the authority to her heart that his parents could not be; her husband, who had wrapped about her such close protection that she had tottered when she thought to walk alone--these were her real world, and of them only Ephraim was left.
It was not in her nature at any time, above all not in these stricken months, to desire to go out into the world alone to make for herself a sphere of usefulness and a circle of companions.

Hence she thought only of returning to Ephraim, and by his help obtaining some occupation by which she could live simply and within his reach.

But when she thought more closely of throwing herself, as it were, penniless and desolate at the feet of this one prized friendship, doubts arose about her path.
One thing which she had lost in the broken camp by her husband's grave, one that if she had had greater power of recollection she would not have left behind in that complete breaking with the past, was a packet of the few letters which Ephraim had from time to time written to her.