ough he had yet
to see her full face.

They walked on. Quite suddenly the lane opened out between two rounded
bluffs, and Shefford looked down upon a grander and more awe-inspiring
scene than ever he had viewed in his dreams.

What appeared to be a green mountainside sloped endlessly down to
a plain, and that rolled and billowed away to a boundless region of
strangely carved rock. The greatness of the scene could not be grasped
in a glance. The slope was long; the plain not as level as it seemed
to be on first sight; here and there round, red rocks, isolated and
strange, like lonely castles, rose out of the green. Beyond the green
all the earth seemed naked, showing smooth, glistening bones. It was
a formidable wall of rock that flung itself up in the distance, carved
into a thousand canyon and walls and domes and peaks, and there was
not a straight nor a broken nor a jagged line in all that wildness. The
color low down was red, dark blue, and purple in the clefts, yellow
upon the heights, and in the distance rainbow-hued. A land of curves and
color!

Shefford uttered an exclamation.

"That's Utah," said Mary. "I come often to sit here. You see that
winding blue line. There.... That's San Juan Canyon. And the other dark
line, that's Escalante Canyon. They wind down into this great purple
chasm--'way over here to the left--and that's the Grand Canyon. They say
not even the Indians have been in there."

Shefford had nothing to say. The moment was one of subtle and vital
assimilation. Such places as this to be unknown to men! What strength,
what wonder, what help, what glory, just to sit there an hour, slowly
and appallingly to realize! Something came to Shefford from the
distance, out of the purple canyon and from those dim, wind-worn peaks.
He resolved to come here to this promontory again and again, alone and
in humble spirit, and learn to know why he had been silenced, why peace
pervaded his soul.

It was with this emotion upon him that he turned to find his companion
watching him. Then for the first time he saw her face fully, and was
thrilled that chance had reserved the privilege for this moment. It was
a girl's face he saw, flower-like, lovely and pure as a Madonna's, and
strangely, tragically sad. The eyes were large, dark gray, the color of
the sage. They were as clear as the air which made distant things close,
and yet they seemed full of shadows, like a ruffled pool under midnight
stars. They disturbed