t, and most likely it
were as well he did not. But the long upward path to her goal was not an
easy one, for if Fritz had lacked emotion, he excelled in detail; and
each time Mona forgot, as she so often did, it provoked expressions from
him that tinged her cheeks with humiliation.

"I have much to learn," she answered almost pitifully, whenever her
uncle asked of her progress, "and so much to unlearn, it seems
discouraging."

"It'll come easier bimeby, girlie," he would respond cheerfully, "the
fust lesson in anything is allus the hardest."

But the vexations of tuition were only a small part of Mona's burden;
for as the weeks went by, and she became accustomed to her new life and
surroundings, the old heartache returned, and as her uncle often
insisted that she and her mother go out to some evening entertainment as
a break in the quiet boarding-house life they led, a new fear assailed
her. What if on street car or in theatre lobby she should suddenly meet
Winn Hardy! His name had not been mentioned for many months, and it was
as if he were dead.

And now Mona was unlearning the sad lesson of loving, and in its place
came a new inspiration, an ambition so broad, so uplifting, so full of
possibilities, that even the voice of love was stilled. At times the
face of Winn would return to her, however, and always bringing a thorn.

"He is what he said all his world were," she would say to herself,
"selfish, fickle, and heartless. He wished to flatter and amuse me and
himself as well, but that was all." And then the moment he had held her
in his arms would return to give the lie to all such thoughts.

At times she hoped that she might meet him some day, just to give one
look of reproach and pass on without a word; and then she dreaded to do
so, believing herself powerless to resist her own longings. Feeling thus
a sense of the wrong he had done her, the tender looks and words he had
uttered, and at last that one sweet moment,--all came back again. Put
him out of her mind she could not, nor his face either. By night,
thoughts of him haunted her pillow, and whenever she set foot out of
their temporary home, no matter where she went, and until she was safe
in it again, that peculiar dread was with her.

She did not know that during all these months of her suspense, Winn
Hardy, discouraged at the utter failure of his ambition and hopeless of
his future, was not only doing his best to put her out of his thoughts,
but battl