The girl bent and plucked something from the grass.

“Here’s a white lily,” she said.  “There are three colors.  The yellow and pink ones are deeper down in the canyon.”

Shefford took the flower and regarded it with great interest.  He had never seen such an exquisite thing.  It had three large petals, curving cuplike, of a whiteness purer than new-fallen snow, and a heart of rich, warm gold.  Its fragrance was so faint as to be almost indistinguishable, yet of a haunting, unforgettable sweetness.  And even while he looked at it the petals drooped and their whiteness shaded and the gold paled.  In a moment the flower was wilted.

“I don’t like to pluck the lilies,” said Mary.  “They die so swiftly.”

Shefford saw the white flowers everywhere in the open, sunny places along the brook.  They swayed with stately grace in the slow, warm wind.  They seemed like three-pointed stars shining out of the green.  He bent over one with a particularly lofty stem, and after a close survey of it he rose to look at her face.  His action was plainly one of comparison.  She laughed and said it was foolish for the women to call her the Sago Lily.  She had no coquetry; she spoke as she would have spoken of the stones at her feet; she did not know that she was beautiful.  Shefford imagined there was some resemblance in her to the lily—­the same whiteness, the same rich gold, and, more striking than either, a strange, rare quality of beauty, of life, intangible as something fleeting, the spirit that had swiftly faded from the plucked flower.  Where had the girl been born—­what had her life been?  Shefford was intensely curious about her.  She seemed as different from any other women he had known as this rare canyon lily was different from the tame flowers at home.

On the return up the slope she outstripped him.  She climbed lightly and tirelessly.  When he reached her upon the promontory there was a stain of red in her cheeks and her expression had changed.

“Let’s go back up over the rocks,” she said.  “I’ve not climbed for—­ for so long.”

“I’ll go where you go,” he replied.

Then she was off, and he followed.  She took to the curves of the bare rocks and climbed.  He sensed a spirit released in her.  It was so strange, so keen, so wonderful to be with her, and when he did catch her he feared to speak lest he break this mood.  Her eyes grew dark and daring, and often she stopped to look away across the wavy sea of stones to something beyond the great walls.  When they got high the wind blew her hair loose and it flew out, a golden stream, with the sun bright upon it.  He saw that she changed her direction, which had been in line with the two peaks, and now she climbed toward the heights.  They came to a more difficult ascent, where the stone still held to the smooth curves, yet was marked by steep bulges and slants and crevices.  Here she became a wild thing.  She ran, she leaped, she would have left him far behind had he not called.  Then she appeared to remember him and waited.