Shefford was grateful for this respite.  He had been worked up to an unusual degree of interest, and now, as the next Mormon woman to be examined was she whom he had loved and loved still, he felt rise in him emotion that threatened to make him conspicuous unless it could be hidden.  The answers of these Mormon women had been not altogether unexpected by him, but once spoken in cold blood under oath, how tragic, how appallingly significant of the shadow, the mystery, the yoke that bound them!  He was amazed, saddened.  He felt bewildered.  He needed to think out the meaning of the falsehoods of women he knew to be good and noble.  Surely religion, instead of fear and loyalty, was the foundation and the strength of this disgrace, this sacrifice.  Absolutely, shame was not in these women, though they swore to shameful facts.  They had been coached to give these baffling answers, every one of which seemed to brand them, not the brazen mothers of illegitimate offspring, but faithful, unfortunate sealed wives.  To Shefford the truth was not in their words, but it sat upon their somber brows.

Was it only his heightened imagination, or did the silence and the suspense grow more intense when a deputy led that dark-hooded, white-clad, slender woman to the defendant’s chair?  She did not walk with the poise that had been manifest in the other women, and she sank into the chair as if she could no longer stand.

“Please remove your hood,” requested the prosecutor.

How well Shefford remembered the strong, shapely hands!  He saw them tremble at the knot of ribbon, and that tremor was communicated to him in a sympathy which made his pulses beat.  He held his breath while she removed the hood.  And then there was revealed, he thought, the loveliest and the most tragic face that ever was seen in a court-room.

A low, whispering murmur that swelled like a wave ran through the hall.  And by it Shefford divined, as clearly as if the fact had been blazoned on the walls, that Mary’s face had been unknown to these villagers.  But the name Sago Lily had not been unknown; Shefford heard it whispered on all sides.

The murmuring subsided.  The judge and his assistants stared at Mary.  As for Shefford, there was no need of his personal feeling to make the situation dramatic.  Not improbably Judge Stone had tried many Mormon women.  But manifestly this one was different.  Unhooded, Mary appeared to be only a young girl, and a court, confronted suddenly with her youth and the suspicion attached to her, could not but have been shocked.  Then her beauty made her seem, in that somber company, indeed the white flower for which she had been named.  But, more likely, it was her agony that bound the court into silence which grew painful.  Perhaps the thought that flashed into Shefford’s mind was telepathic; it seemed to him that every watcher there realized that in this defendant the judge had a girl of softer mold, of different spirit, and from her the bitter truth could be wrung.