ait for days to get better acquainted. But the impulse
is on me. I've been so interested in all you Mormon women. The fact--the
meaning of this hidden village is so--so terrible to me. But that's none
of my business. I have spent my afternoons and evenings with these women
at the different cottages. You do not mingle with them. They are lonely,
but have not such loneliness as yours. I have passed here every night.
No light--no sound. I can't help thinking. Don't censure me or be afraid
or draw within yourself just because I must think. I may be all wrong.
But I'm curious. I wonder about you. Who are you? Mary--Mary what? Maybe
I really don't want to know. I came with selfish motive and now I'd like
to--to--what shall I say? Make your life a little less lonely for the
while I'm here. That's all. It needn't offend. And if you accept it, how
much easier I can tell you my secret. You are a Mormon and I--well, I am
only a wanderer in these wilds. But--we might help each other.... Have I
made a mistake?"

"No--no," she cried, almost wildly.

"We can be friends then. You will trust me, help me?"

"Yes, if I dare."

"Surely you may dare what the other women would?"

She was silent.

And the wistfulness of her silence touched him. He felt contrition. He
did not stop to analyze his own emotions, but he had an inkling that
once this strange situation was ended he would have food for reflection.
What struck him most now was the girl's blanched face, the strong,
nervous clasp of her hands, the visible tumult of her bosom. Excitement
alone could not be accountable for this. He had not divined the cause
for such agitation. He was puzzled, troubled, and drawn irresistibly. He
had not said what he had planned to say. The moment had given birth to
his speech, and it had flowed. What was guiding him?

"Mary," he said, earnestly, "tell me--have you mother, father, sister,
brother? Something prompts me to ask that."

"All dead--gone--years ago," she answered.

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen, I think. I'm not sure."

"You ARE lonely."

His words were gentle and divining.

"O God!" she cried. "Lonely!"

Then as a man in a dream he beheld her weeping. There was in her the
unconsciousness of a child and the passion of a woman. He gazed out into
the dark shadows and up at the white stars, and then at the bowed head
with its mass of glinting hair. But her agitation was no longer strange
to him. A few gentle and kind words had pro