And the wistfulness of her silence touched him. He felt contrition. He did not stop to analyze his own emotions, but he had an inkling that once this strange situation was ended he would have food for reflection. What struck him most now was the girl's blanched face, the strong, nervous clasp of her hands, the visible tumult of her bosom. Excitement alone could not be accountable for this. He had not divined the cause for such agitation. He was puzzled, troubled, and drawn irresistibly. He had not said what he had planned to say. The moment had given birth to his speech, and it had flowed. What was guiding him?
“Mary,” he said, earnestly, “tell me—have you mother, father, sister, brother? Something prompts me to ask that.”
“All dead—gone—years ago,” she answered.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen, I think. I'm not sure.”
“You ARE lonely.”
His words were gentle and divining.
“O God!” she cried. “Lonely!”
Then as a man in a dream he beheld her weeping. There was in her the unconsciousness of a child and the passion of a woman. He gazed out into the dark shadows and up at the white stars, and then at the bowed head with its mass of glinting hair. But her agitation was no longer strange to him. A few gentle and kind words had proved her undoing. He knew then that whatever her life was, no kindness or sympathy entered it. Presently she recovered, and sat as before, only whiter of face it seemed, and with something tragic in her dark eyes. She was growing cold and still again, aloof, more like those other Mormon women.
“I understand,” he said. “I'm not sorry I spoke. I felt your trouble, whatever it is.... Do not retreat into your cold shell, I beg of you.... Let me trust you with my secret.”