What they heard allayed their worst fears. She still
smiled, and seemed as cheerful as before, they heard, and she neither
spoke nor prayed in public, but she led the singing always. Now the
anxious and the sceptical and the reactionary ventured out to see and
hear; and seeing and hearing gave them a satisfaction they hardly dared
express. She was more handsome than ever, and if her eyes glistened with
a light they had never seen before, and awed them, her lips still smiled,
and the old laugh came when she spoke to them. Their awe increased. This
was "getting religion" with a difference.
But presently they received a shock. A whisper grew that Laura was in
love with the Faith Healer. Some woman's instinct drove straight to the
centre of a disconcerting possibility, and in consternation she told her
husband; and Jansen husbands had a freemasonry of gossip. An hour, and
all Jansen knew, or thought they knew; and the "saved" rejoiced; and the
rest of the population, represented by Nicolle Terasse at one end and
Flood Rawley at the other, flew to arms. No vigilance committee was ever
more determined and secret and organised than the unconverted civic
patriots, who were determined to restore Jansen to its old-time
condition.
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