wonderful
thought-provoking statement that Shefford needed time to ponder how
deep the Mormon was. To what limit would he go? Did he mean that here,
between two men who loved the same girl, class, duty, honor, creed were
nothing if they stood in the way of her deliverance and her life?

"Joe Lake, you Mormons are impossible," said Shefford, deliberately.
"You don't want to see her grave. So long as she lives--remains on the
earth--white and gold like the flower you call her, that's enough for
you. It's her body you think of. And that's the great and horrible error
in your religion.... But death of the soul is infinitely worse than
death of the body. I have been thinking of her soul.... So here we
stand, you and I. You to save her life--I to save her soul! What will
you do?"

"Why, John, I'd turn Gentile," he said, with terrible softness. It was
a softness that scorned Shefford for asking, and likewise it flung
defiance at his creed and into the face of hell.

Shefford felt the sting and the exaltation.

"And I'd be a Mormon," he said.

"All right. We understand each other. Reckon there won't be any call for
such extremes. I haven't an idea what you mean--what can be done. But I
say, go slow, so we won't all find graves. First cheer her up somehow.
Make her want to live. But go slow, John. AND DON'T BE WITH HER LATE!"

. . . . . . . . . . .

That night Shefford found her waiting for him in the moonlight--a girl
who was as transparent as crystal-clear water, who had left off the
somber gloom with the black hood, who tremulously embraced happiness
without knowing it, who was one moment timid and wild like a
half-frightened fawn, and the next, exquisitely half-conscious of
what it meant to be thought dead, but to be alive, to be awakening,
wondering, palpitating, and to be loved.

Shefford lived the hour as a dream and went back to the quiet darkness
under the cedars to lie wide-eyed, trying to recall all that she had
said. For she had talked as if utterance had long been dammed behind a
barrier of silence.

There followed other hours like that one, indescribable hours, so sweet
they stung, and in which, keeping pace with his love, was the nobler
stride of a spirit that more every day lightened her burden.

The thing he had to do, sooner or later, was to tell her he knew she was
Fay Larkin, not dead, but alive, and that, not love nor religion, but
sacrifice, nailed her down to her martyrdom. Many and many a time