had been his dream to chase a rainbow--it had been his
determination to find her in the lost Surprise Valley. Well, he had
found her. It never occurred to him to ask Nas Ta Bega how he had
discovered that the Sago Lily was Fay Larkin. The wonder was, Shefford
thought, that he had so long been blind himself. How simply everything
worked out now! Every thought, every recollection of her was proof. Her
strange beauty like that of the sweet and rare lily, her low voice that
showed the habit of silence, her shapely hands with the clasp strong as
a man's, her lithe form, her swift step, her wonderful agility upon the
smooth, steep trails, and the wildness of her upon the heights, and
the haunting, brooding shadow of her eyes when she gazed across the
canyon--all these fitted so harmoniously the conception of a child
lost in a beautiful Surprise Valley and growing up in its wildness and
silence, tutored by the sad love of broken Jane and Lassiter. Yes, to
save her had been Shefford's dream, and he had loved that dream. He
had loved the dream and he had loved the child. The secret of her
hiding-place as revealed by the story told him and his slow growth from
dream to action--these had strangely given Fay Larkin to him. Then
had come the bitter knowledge that she was dead. In the light of this
subsequent revelation how easy to account for his loving Mary, too.
Never would she be Mary again to him! Fay Larkin and the Sago Lily were
one and the same. She was here, near him, and he was powerless for the
present to help her or to reveal himself. She was held back there in
that gloomy hall among those somber Mormons, alien to the women, bound
in some fatal way to one of the men, and now, by reason of her weakness
in the trial, surely to be hated. Thinking of her past and her present,
of the future, and that secret Mormon hose face she had never seen,
Shefford felt a sinking of his heart, a terrible cold pang in his
breast, a fainting of his spirit. She had sworn she was no sealed wife.
But had she not lied? So, then, how utterly powerless he was!

But here to save him, to uplift him, came that strange mystic insight
which had been the gift of the desert to him. She was not dead. He had
found her. What mattered obstacles, even that implacable creed to which
she had been sacrificed, in the face of this blessed and overwhelming
truth? It was as mighty as the love suddenly dawning upon him. A strong
and terrible and deathly sweet wind se