"Why have you let yourself be beaten and shot at and imprisoned and horribly threatened, to lead us all to this new Zion, wherever it may be ?" She repeated the question.

"If it was ambition, why did you hold to it when there did not seem to be the slightest chance that your sect could survive, or that you would escape death ?" She was asking with more heart in her tone now that she had been made to realise what she had of respect and friendship for this man.
"I hain't got the courage most people think I have," he replied sadly; "I am scared enough; I am scared sometimes of the very water I go into to baptize in, let alone men that want to murder me; but I am more afraid to go against my revelations, for I know if I went against them there would be nothing for me but the pit and eternal fire.

I don't say that it would be the same for any of you.

I used to preach that it would, but in prison, when I thought of my folks standing up to be killed, I thought perhaps I had gone beyond what was told me in preaching that way; but as for me, I've seen and I've heard." He did not turn or take restless steps upon the floor.

It would have been a relief to her if he had moved; but he remained just where he first stood, strong enough to have this colloquy over without restlessness.
"I am no saint," he said, "as you know very well, and there's a lot of things I've done, thinking that my revelations told me, which I don't know whether they told me or not, for in prison I saw that the things were bad things, like that mess of the bank, and running away as I did.
I guess I could not have been living right, and the devil gulled me.