realization for
Shefford! The hour spent with her then was only a moment.

He walked under the stars that night and they shed a glorious light upon
him. He tried to think, to plan, but the sweetness of remembered word or
look made mental effort almost impossible. He got as far as the thought
that he would do well to drift, to wait till she learned she loved
him, and then, perhaps, she could be persuaded to let him take her and
Lassiter and Jane away together.

And from that night he went at his work and the part he played in the
village with a zeal and a cunning that left him free to seek Fay when he
chose.

Sometimes in the afternoon, always for a while in the evening, he was
with her. They climbed the walls, and sat upon a lonely height to look
afar; they walked under the stars, and the cedars, and the shadows
of the great cliffs. She had a beautiful mind. Listening to her, he
imagined he saw down into beautiful Surprise Valley with all its weird
shadows, its colored walls and painted caves, its golden shafts of
morning light and the red haze at sunset; and he felt the silence that
must have been there, and the singing of the wind in the cliffs, and the
sweetness and fragrance of the flowers, and the wildness of it all. Love
had worked a marvelous transformation in this girl who had lived her
life in a canyon. The burden upon her did not weigh heavily. She could
not have an unhappy thought. She spoke of the village, of her Mormon
companions, of daily happenings, of Stonebridge, of many things in a
matter-of-fact way that showed how little they occupied her mind. She
even spoke of sealed wives in a kind of dreamy abstraction. Something
had possession of her, something as strong as the nature which had
developed her, and in its power she, in her simplicity, was utterly
unconscious, a watching and feeling girl. A strange, witching, radiant
beauty lurked in her smile. And Shefford heard her laugh in his dreams.

The weeks slipped by. The black mountain took on a white cap of snow;
in the early mornings there was ice in the crevices on the heights and
frost in the valley. In the sheltered canyon where sunshine seemed
to linger it was warm and pleasant, so that winter did not kill the
flowers.

Shefford waited so long for Fay's awakening that he believed it would
never come, and, believing, had not the heart to force it upon her. Then
there was a growing fear with him. What would Fay Larkin do when she
awakened to th