him. Her mouth had the sweet curves and redness of
youth, but it showed bitterness, pain, and repression.

"Where are the sago-lilies?" he asked, suddenly.

"Farther down. It's too cold up here for them. Come," she said.

He followed her down a winding trail--down and down till the green plain
rose to blot out the scrawled wall of rock, down into a verdant canyon
where a brook made swift music over stones, where the air was sultry
and hot, laden with the fragrant breath of flower and leaf. This was a
canyon of summer, and it bloomed.

The girl bent and plucked something from the grass.

"Here's a white lily," she said. "There are three colors. The yellow and
pink ones are deeper down in the canyon."

Shefford took the flower and regarded it with great interest. He had
never seen such an exquisite thing. It had three large petals, curving
cuplike, of a whiteness purer than new-fallen snow, and a heart of rich,
warm gold. Its fragrance was so faint as to be almost indistinguishable,
yet of a haunting, unforgettable sweetness. And even while he looked at
it the petals drooped and their whiteness shaded and the gold paled. In
a moment the flower was wilted.

"I don't like to pluck the lilies," said Mary. "They die so swiftly."

Shefford saw the white flowers everywhere in the open, sunny places
along the brook. They swayed with stately grace in the slow, warm wind.
They seemed like three-pointed stars shining out of the green. He bent
over one with a particularly lofty stem, and after a close survey of it
he rose to look at her face. His action was plainly one of comparison.
She laughed and said it was foolish for the women to call her the Sago
Lily. She had no coquetry; she spoke as she would have spoken of the
stones at her feet; she did not know that she was beautiful. Shefford
imagined there was some resemblance in her to the lily--the same
whiteness, the same rich gold, and, more striking than either, a
strange, rare quality of beauty, of life, intangible as something
fleeting, the spirit that had swiftly faded from the plucked flower.
Where had the girl been born--what had her life been? Shefford was
intensely curious about her. She seemed as different from any other
women he had known as this rare canyon lily was different from the tame
flowers at home.

On the return up the slope she outstripped him. She climbed lightly and
tirelessly. When he reached her upon the promontory there was a stain of
red in her