e young women, he liked them better, he pitied them, he was good for
them. It shamed him, hurt him, somehow, to see how they tried to forget
something when they were with him. Not improbably a little of it was
coquetry, as natural as a laugh to any pretty woman. But that was not
what hurt him. It was to see Ruth or Rebecca, as the case might be, full
of life and fun, thoroughly enjoying some jest or play, all of a sudden
be strangely recalled from the wholesome pleasure of a girl to become
a deep and somber woman. The crimes in the name of religion! How he
thought of the blood and the ruin laid at the door of religion! He
wondered if that were so with Nas Ta Bega's religion, and he meant
to find out some day. The women he liked best he imagined the least
religious, and they made less effort to attract him.

Every night in the dark he went to Mary's home and sat with her on the
porch. He never went inside. For all he knew, his visits were unknown to
her neighbors. Still, it did not matter to him if they found out. To her
he could talk as he had never talked to any one. She liberated all his
thought and fancy. He filled her mind.

As there had been a change in the other women, so was there in Mary;
however, it had no relation to the bishop's visit. The time came when
Shefford could not but see that she lived and dragged through the long
day for the sake of those few hours in the shadow of the stars with
him. She seldom spoke. She listened. Wonderful to him--sometimes she
laughed--and it seemed the sound was a ghost of childhood pleasure. When
he stopped to consider that she might fall in love with him he drove the
thought from him. When he realized that his folly had become sweet
and that the sweetness imperiously drew him, he likewise cast off that
thought. The present was enough. And if he had any treasures of mind and
heart he gave them to her.

She never asked him to stay, but she showed that she wanted him to. That
made it hard to go. Still, he never stayed late. The moment of parting
was like a break. Her good-by was sweet, low music; it lingered on his
ear; it bade him come to-morrow night; and it sent him away into the
valley to walk under the stars, a man fighting against himself.

One night at parting, as he tried to see her face in the wan glow of a
clouded moon, he said:

"I've been trying to find a sago-lily."

"Have you never seen one?" she asked.

"No." He meant to say something with a double meaning