William MacLeod Raine

“ He is not very well fixed financially, and it would be a great match for one of his daughters to marry as rich and influential a Mormon as Prendergast. If the girl is a good Mormon they are likely to pull it through.”
“Force her to marry him?” demanded Burton, his eyes grown hard. “In the twentieth century; in the United States?”
“Utah isn't in the United States, and Mauveline Hallett isn't living in the twentieth century. Her father is a contemporary of the patriarchs, a sort of up-to-date Abraham. ”

“ So he devoted himself in his turn to the jagged line of peaks falling every instant into a deeper violet-blue, into a less sharply defined silhouette against the purple sky dashed with pink from the disappearing sun glow. ”

“ Burton, giving an alternate cursory inattention to the magazine he held listlessly and to the scenery, was acutely conscious of the presence of the girl in section 8 with the fine powdered freckles. She had got on the train at Denver, as he had, and when the conductor made his round of ticket inspection the alert young man in No. 7 had discovered that her destination, too, was Salt Lake. “'What gilt-edged luck!” he had mentally congratulated himself. ”

“ It is a discipline laid on the people by command of God.”
“I don't think any man could be good enough for such a place. The burden on the women must be terrible, sometimes.”
“It is,” she said simply, and Burton saw in her eyes the shadowy sadness deepen.
He did not understand the reason for it, but his instinct led him to carry the conversation back to lighter topics.
“I've been wishing all day that heaven would drop some common acquaintance down between us just long enough to say, 'Miss Mauveline Hallett, may I present to you Mr. Gerald Burton?' and then whisk away instanter. ”

“ And she to her window, with its panorama of brown foothills ribbed with white where the snow filled the gulches, its jagged outline of blue; white mountains rising occasionally to lofty peaks made glorious in a bright silver as the sun caught their tips. ”

“ The offender would be prosecuted by a Mormon lawyer, and tried before a Mormon judge by a Mormon jury. That is the beauty of a statehood, from the Mormon point of view. We're not in the days of the Edmunds-Tucker law, worse luck.”
“So you sit back and let an atrocious thing like this be done?”
“We do. We can't help it. There is just one person can hinder it, and I don't know whether she can. But it would be interesting to try. Go to Mauveline Hallett herself,' suggested Rogers, ironically.
“I will,” said Burton grimly.
Gerald Burton found Salt Lake a place much to his liking. ”

“ Human nature is the same everywhere, isn't it? You can't tell a Methodist from a Baptist on the streets, can you; I mean if you don't know them?” There was in the manner of her speech a hesitation, almost a deference, that Burton was not used to find in the American girl he knew. He wondered what provincial environment was responsible for it.
“No—o,” he admitted, “but I have always had an idea that I could tell a Mormon.”
Her face was almost saucy now, the light of laughter in her eyes. “You will have ample chance to test your power of discrimination.”
“At Salt Lake? ”

“ Burton was conscious of a sudden sinking of the heart. “Prendergast! Who is he?”
“One of the old polygamous hierarchy that rules Utah. Mauveline Hallett will be his fourth wife.”
“I don't believe it; I don't believe the thing is possible. It isn't in the girl to do such a thing. My God! The thing is unthinkable.”
Rogers looked at him curiously. “Wouldn't she? Don't be too sure about that. You can never tell what a Mormon woman will do. You may depend on it that there will be a good deal of pressure brought to bear upon her. Old Hallett is a polygamist himself ”