“Nobody can help her, unless it's you,” went on the Mormon. “That's plain talk. She seemed different this morning. Why, she was alive—she talked—she smiled.... Shefford, if you cheer her up I'll go to hell for you!”
The big Mormon, on his knees, with his hands in a pan of dough, and his shirt all covered with flour, presented an incongruous figure of a man actuated by pathos and passion. Yet the contrast made his emotion all the simpler and stronger. Shefford grew closer to Joe in that moment.
“Why do you think I can cheer her, help her?” queried Shefford.
“I don't know. But she's different with you. It's not that you're a Gentile, though, for all the women are crazy about you. You talk to her. You have power over her, Shefford. I feel that. She's only a kid.”
“Who is she, Joe? Where did she come from?” asked Shefford, very low, with his eyes cast down.
“I don't know. I can't find out. Nobody knows. It's a mystery—to all the younger Mormons, anyway.”
Shefford burned to ask questions about the Mormon whose sealed wife the girl was, but he respected Joe too much to take advantage of him in a poignant moment like this. Besides, it was only jealousy that made him burn to know the Mormon's identity, and jealousy had become a creeping, insidious, growing fire. He would be wise not to add fuel to it. He rejected many things before he thought of one that he could voice to his friend.
“Joe, it's only her body that belongs to—to.... Her soul is lost to—”
“John Shefford, let that go. My mind's tired. I've been taught so and so, and I'm not bright.... But, after all, men are much alike. The thing with you and me is this—we don't want to see HER grave!”
Love spoke there. The Mormon had seized upon the single elemental point that concerned him and his friend in their relation to this unfortunate girl. His simple, powerful statement united them; it gave the lie to his hint of denseness; it stripped the truth naked. It was such a wonderful thought-provoking statement that Shefford needed time to ponder how deep the Mormon was. To what limit would he go? Did he mean that here, between two men who loved the same girl, class, duty, honor, creed were nothing if they stood in the way of her deliverance and her life?