She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in its abstract earnestness.

‘And you mean you can’t love?’ she asked, in trepidation.

‘Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is not love.’

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could not submit.

‘But how do you know—if you have never REALLY loved?’ she asked.

‘It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of them.’

‘Then there is no love,’ cried Ursula.

‘Ultimately, no, there is something something else. But, ultimately, there IS no love.’

Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:

‘Then let me go home—what am I doing here?’

‘There is the door,’ he said. ‘You are a free agent.’

He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.

‘If there is no love, what is there?’ she cried, almost jeering.

‘Something,’ he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his might.

‘What?’

He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while she was in this this state of opposition.

‘There is,’ he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; ‘a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you—not in the emotional, loving plane—but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman,—so there can be no calling calling to book, in any form whatsoever—because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.’

Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.

‘It is just purely selfish,’ she said.

‘If it is pure, yes. But it isn’t selfish at all. Because I don’t KNOW what I want of you. I deliver MYSELF over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.’

She pondered along her own line of thought.

He called on John Ferrier that night, and many times again, until his face was a familiar one at the farmhouse. John, cooped up in the valley, and absorbed in his work, had had little chance of learning the news of the outside world during the last twelve years. All this Jefferson Hope was able to tell him, and in a style style which interested Lucy as well as her father. He had been a pioneer in California, and could narrate many a strange tale of fortunes made and fortunes lost in those wild, halcyon days. He had been a scout too, and a trapper, a silver explorer, and a ranchman. Wherever stirring adventures were to be had, Jefferson Hope had been there in search of them. He soon became a favourite with the old farmer, who spoke eloquently of his virtues. On such occasions, Lucy was silent, but her blushing cheek and her bright, happy eyes showed only too clearly that her young heart was no longer her own. Her Her honest father may not have observed these symptoms, but they were assuredly not thrown away upon the man who had won her affections.

One summer evening he came galloping down the road and pulled up at the gate. She was at the doorway, and came down to meet him. He threw the bridle over the fence and strode up the pathway.

“I am off, Lucy,” he said, taking her two hands in his, and gazing tenderly down into her face: “I won’t ask you to come with me now, but will you be ready to come when I am here again?”

“And when will that be?” she asked, blushing and laughing.

“A couple of months at the outside. I will come and claim you then, my darling. There’s no one who can stand between us. ”

“And how about father?” she asked.

“He has given his consent, provided we get these mines working all right. I have no fear on that head.”

“Oh, well; of course, if you and father have arranged it all, there’s no more to be said,” she whispered, with her cheek against his broad breast.

“Thank God!” he said, hoarsely, stooping and kissing her. “It is settled, then. The longer I stay, the harder it will be to go. They are waiting for me at the canon. Good-bye, my own darling — good-bye. In two months you shall see me.”

He tore himself from her as he spoke, and, flinging himself upon his horse, galloped furiously away, never even looking round, as though afraid that his resolution might fail him if he took one glance at what he was leaving. She stood at the gate, gazing after him until he vanished from her sight. Then she walked back into the house, the happiest girl in all Utah.

Three weeks had passed since Jefferson Hope and his comrades had departed from Salt Lake City. John Ferrier’s heart was sore within him when he thought of the young man’s return, and of the impending loss of his adopted child. Yet her bright and happy face reconciled him to the arrangement more than any argument could have done. He had always determined, deep down in his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point he was inflexible. He had to seal his mouth on the subject, however, for to express an unorthodox opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in the Land of the Saints.