“Oh, wonderful!” exclaimed the girl.  “It might be the celestial city in the desert, promised by the Mormon prophet!”

“It may be so to them.  May it be so to us.  Blessed be the name of the Lord God of Hosts!” said Will Banion.

She looked at him suddenly, strangely.  What sort of man was he, after all, so full of strange contradictions—­a savage, a criminal, yet reverent and devout?

“Come,” he said, “we can get back now, and you must go.  They will think you are lost.”

He stepped to the saddle of his shivering horse and drew off the poncho, which he had spread above the animal instead of using it himself.  He was wet to the bone.  With apology he cast the waterproof over Molly’s shoulders, since she now had discarded her blankets.  He led the way, his horse following them.

They walked in silence in the deep twilight which began to creep across the blackened land.  All through the storm he had scarcely spoken to her, and he spoke but rarely now.  He was no more than guide.  But as she approached safety Molly Wingate began to reflect how much she really owed this man.  He had been a pillar of strength, elementally fit to combat all the elements, else she had perished.

“Wait!”

She had halted at the point of the last hill which lay between them and the wagons.  They could hear the wailing of the children close at hand.  He turned inquiringly.  She handed back the poncho.

“I am all right now.  You’re wet, you’re tired, you’re burned to pieces.  Won’t you come on in?”

“Not to-night!”

But still she hesitated.  In her mind there were going on certain processes she could not have predicted an hour earlier.

“I ought to thank you,” she said.  “I do thank you.”

His utter silence made it hard for her.  He could see her hesitation, which made it hard for him, coveting sight of her always, loath to leave her.

Now a sudden wave of something, a directness and frankness born in some way in this new world apart from civilization, like a wind-blown flame, irresponsible and irresistible, swept over Molly Wingate’s soul as swiftly, as unpremeditatedly as it had over his.  She was a young woman fit for love, disposed for love, at the age for love.  Now, to her horror, the clasp of this man’s arm, even when repelled in memory, returned, remained in memory!  She was frightened that it still remained—­frightened at her own great curiousness.

“About—­that”—­he knew what she meant—­“I don’t want you to think anything but the truth of me.  If you have deceived people, I don’t want to deceive you.”

“What do you mean?” He was a man of not very many words.

“About—­that!”

“You said it could never be.”

“No.  If it could, I would not be stopping here now to say so much.”

He stepped closer, frowning.

“What is it you are saying then—­that a man’s a worse brute when he goes mad, as I did?”