great peaks were crowned as with snow. A
coyote uttered his cutting cry. There were a few melancholy notes from
a night bird of the stone walls. The air was clear and cold, with a
tang of frost in it. Shefford gazed about him at the vast, uplifted,
insulating walls, and that feeling of his which was more than a sense
told him how walls like these and the silence and shadow and mystery had
been nearly all of Fay Larkin's life. He felt them all in her.

He stopped out in the open, near the line where dark shadow of the wall
met the silver moonlight on the grass, and here, by a huge flat stone
where he had come often alone and sometimes with Ruth, he faced Fay
Larkin in the spirit to tell her gently that he knew her, and sternly to
force her secret from her.

"Am I your friend?" he began.

"Ah!--my only friend," she said.

"Do you trust me, believe I mean well by you, want to help you?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Well, then, let me speak of you. You know one topic we've never touched
upon. You!"

She was silent, and looked wonderingly, a little fearfully, at him, as
if vague, disturbing thoughts were entering the fringe of her mind.

"Our friendship is a strange one, is it not?" he went on.

"How do I know? I never had any other friendship. What do you mean by
strange?"

"Well, I'm a young man. You're a--a married woman. We are together a
good deal--and like to be."

"Why is that strange?" she asked.

Suddenly Shefford realized that there was nothing strange in what was
natural. A remnant of sophistication clung to him and that had spoken.
He needed to speak to her in a way which in her simplicity she would
understand.

"Never mind strange. Say that I am interested in you, and, as you're not
happy, I want to help you. And say that your neighbors are curious and
oppose my idea. Why do they?"

"They're jealous and want you themselves," she replied, with sweet
directness. "They've said things I don't understand. But I felt
they--they hated in me what would be all right in themselves."

Here to simplicity she added truth and wisdom, as an Indian might have
expressed them. But shame was unknown to her, and she had as yet only
vague perceptions of love and passion. Shefford began to realize the
quickness of her mind, that she was indeed awakening.

"They are jealous--were jealous before I ever came here. That's only
human nature. I was trying to get to a point. Your neighbors are
curious. They oppose me. They hate y