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I've known you. You will look at the woman for many years if you marry her. What fool would not want to be pleased with what he sees?" Karl laughed. "You surprise me, Father. In the time I have known you I would not have thought you to be a man with such sympathy when it comes to matters of the heart."
    Father, too, laughed. "I was a man first, a priest second."
    Karl now looked his friend straight in the eye, all laughter faded. "Then I admit to you I am pleased by her appearance. I am perhaps too pleased. Perhaps I will not use good judgment about her other lies."
    "Tell me," the priest said simply, sitting down again.
    "She is only a child. I was expecting a full-grown woman of twenty-five. But Anna lied about this, too. She is only seventeen years old."
    "But did she not make the choice of her own free will to come here and be your wife?"
    "Not exactly. I think she and the boy were destitute. I was their last resort. Yes, she came to be married, but I think it was the lesser of two evils."
    "Has she told you that?"
    "Not exactly in those words. She has begged me not to send them away, but while she is begging I see how very young and scared she is, and I do not think she realizes all that is entailed in being a wife."
    "Karl, you are placing a burden of worry on yourself that perhaps is not necessary. Why not let her be the judge of whether or not she is old enough to marry?"
    "But seventeen, Father ... She has admitted she knows almost nothing about being housekeeper and cook. There would be much I would have to teach her, too."
    "It would be a challenge, Karl, but it could be fun with a spirited girl."
    "It could also be a mistake with a spirited girl."
    "Karl, have you considered why she lied? If she and the boy came to you as a last hope, I can see why she felt the need to lie to get here. I do not condone the lies, Karl, not at all. But I think perhaps they are forgivable, perhaps her circumstances make them so. I think you must ask yourself if she could not, underneath, be an honest woman who was forced into lying by her circumstances. Perhaps, Karl, you are judging her too harshly for your own good."
    "You leave me much to consider, my friend," Karl said, rising and stretching. "All my life I have been taught what is right and what is wrong, and I have been warned that the path runs narrowly. Never before have I had to consider circumstances that lessen the degree of wrongness. I think you have helped me tonight to look at things from another person's viewpoint. I will try to do this."
    He paused, glanced across the room toward the doorway. "Anna and the boy have had plenty of time to get themselves settled for the night. I think I will join them and finish my considerations there."
    "Sleep well, Karl," the priest wished.
    Karl scraped the ashes from his pipe. "You know, Father," he said thoughtfully, "she has assured me these are the only lies she told, and made me the promise never to lie to me again. That promise is worth something."
    Father Pierrot smiled, placed a hand on Karl Lindstrom's shoulder and understood how a man of his nature would be torn by uncertainty at a time like this. Most men who had lived alone for two years on the frontier would not stop to think of anything but their own need for a woman, both in and out of bed. But Karl was a man of rare quality, rare honesty. Anna Reardon would be a lucky woman to marry such a man.

      It was dark, dusty and dry in the schoolroom. Karl found his empty pallet and stretched out on his back with both hands behind his head. He thought about all Father Pierrot had said, and for the first time, and guiltlessly now, would have allowed himself to consider Anna as a woman. But he could not do this; he found he thought of her as a child instead. She was tall, but so thin it gave her a look of almost boyish callowness.
    Her wide-eyed fright at times today made him think of her as a green young girl who perhaps did not even know what was the duty of the marriage