“Yes.  Are you?” he replied, low-voiced.

“I’ve only to put on my hood.  I think luck favors you.  Hester was here and she said Elder Smith told some one that Mary hadn’t been offered anything to eat yet.  So I’m taking her a little.  It’ll be a good excuse for me to get in the school-house to see her.  I can throw off this dress and she can put it on in a minute.  Then the hood.  I mustn’t forget to hide her golden hair.  You know how it flies.  But this is a big hood. . . .  Well, I’m ready now.  And—­this ’s our last time together.”

“Ruth, what can I say—­how can I thank you?”

“I don’t want any thanks.  It’ll be something to think of always—­to make me happy. . . .  Only I’d like to feel you—­you cared a little.”

The wistful smile was there, a tremor on the sad lips, and a shadow of soul-hunger in her eyes.  Shefford did not misunderstand her.  She did not mean love, although it was a yearning for real love that she mutely expressed.

“Care!  I shall care all my life,” he said, with strong feeling.  “I shall never forget you.”

“It’s not likely I’ll forget you. . . .  Good-by, John!”

Shefford took her in his arms and held her close.  “Ruth—­good-by!” he said, huskily.

Then he released her.  She adjusted the hood and, taking up a little tray which held food covered with a napkin, she turned to the door.  He opened it and they went out.

They did not speak another word.

It was not a long walk from Ruth’s home to the school-house, yet if it were to be measured by Shefford’s emotion the distance would have been unending.  The sacrifice offered by Ruth and Joe would have been noble under any circumstances had they been Gentiles or persons with no particular religion, but, considering that they were Mormons, that Ruth had been a sealed-wife, that Joe had been brought up under the strange, secret, and binding creed, their action was no less than tremendous in its import.  Shefford took it to mean vastly more than loyalty to him and pity for Fay Larkin.  As Ruth and Joe had arisen to this height, so perhaps would other young Mormons, have arisen.  It needed only the situation, the climax, to focus these long-insulated, slow-developing and inquiring minds upon the truth—­that one wife, one mother of children, for one man at one time as a law of nature, love, and righteousness.  Shefford felt as if he were marching with the whole younger generation of Mormons, as if somehow he had been a humble instrument in the working out of their destiny, in the awakening that was to eliminate from their religion the only thing which kept it from being as good for man, and perhaps as true, as any other religion.

And then suddenly he turned the corner of school-house to encounter Joe talking with the Mormon Henninger.  Elder Smith was not present.

“Why, hello, Ruth!” greeted Joe.  “You’ve fetched Mary some dinner.  Now that’s good of you.”