ebirds, chirping a welcome.

Then he left the scenes of his boyhood days, so happy in memory, and as
he drove away, turned for a last look at the old brown house, feeling
much as one does after visiting an ancient graveyard where ancestors lie
buried.

He had a week's leave of absence from his duties, now ahead of him, and
he went cousining. He also hunted up a few old schoolmates, putting
himself in touch with their rustic lives and talking over school days.

Then he returned to the city, feeling that luck had dealt unfairly by
him and that he was more out of place than ever.

And now began a period in Winn's life which he never afterward recalled
without a chill of dread. To no one did he confide his feelings, for no
one, he felt, could understand them. It was not exactly a love-lorn fit
of despondency, and yet it was, for Mona was ever present in his
thoughts. He avoided Jack Nickerson, hating to listen to his inevitable
sneering, and kept away from Ethel Sherman. He hunted for news items, as
duty called him, visiting the stock exchange, the theatre, the court
rooms, and the morgue. And while he looked for news, recording simple
drunks and their penalties, suicides and their names and history, and
the advent of theatrical stars with equal indifference, he scanned the
crowded streets and all public places, ever on the watch for one fair
face. Often he would stand on a corner for an hour, watching the passing
throng, and then at a theatre entrance until all had departed. And
though he was one of that busy throng of pushing people, a spectator of
careless, laughing humanity crowding into and out of playhouses, he was
not of them. Instead was he a disappointed, discouraged man, whose
ambitions had come to naught and whose hopes were in shadow. He was
moody and silent at home and aimless at his work, and as the days went
by with never one glimpse of the face he now longed to see more than all
else in the world, he grew utterly hopeless.

How many times had he lived over those summer days on Rockhaven, how
often fancied himself in the cave listening to the artless words and
simple music of that child of nature, and how he cursed his own
stupidity and lack of appreciation, need not be specified.

With him, as with us all, the blessings that had been his seemed to
brighten and grow dearer as they took flight.

And of Mona or her whereabouts, not one word or hint had reached him.

CHAPTER XLVI

A NEW STAR