Shefford really lived through the busy day for that hour with Fay in the twilight. And every evening seemed the same. He would find her in the dark, alone, silent, brooding, hopeless. Her mood did not puzzle him, but how to keep from plunging her deeper into despair baffled him. He exhausted all his powers trying to do for her what he had been able to do for Ruth. Yet he failed. Something had blunted her. The shadow of that baneful trial hovered over her, and he came to sense a strange terror in her. It was mostly always present. Was she thinking of Jane Withersteen and Lassiter, left dead or imprisoned in the valley from which she had been brought so mysteriously? Shefford wearied his brain revolving these questions. The fate of her friends, and the cross she bore--of these was tragedy born, but the terror--that Shefford divined came of waiting for the visit of the Mormon whose face she had never seen. Shefford prayed that he might never meet this man. Finally he grew desperate. When he first arrived at the girl's home she would speak, she showed gladness, relief, and then straightway she dropped back into the shadow of her gloom. When he got up to go then there was a wistfulness, an unspoken need, an unconscious reliance, in her reluctant good night. Then the hour came when he reached his limit. He must begin his revelation. “You never ask me anything--let alone about myself,” he said. “I'd like to hear,” she replied, timidly. “Do I strike you as an unhappy man?” “No, indeed.” “Well, how DO I strike you?” This was an entirely new tack he had veered to. “Very good and kind to us women,” she said. “I don't know about that. If I am so, it doesn't bring me happiness. ... Do you remember what I told you once, about my being a preacher--disgrace, ruin, and all that--and my rainbow-chasing dream out here after a--a lost girl?” “I--remember all--you said,” she replied, very low.