heart and soul even, were back in the cave, and he was listening.

And it was because this cry of love, this thrill of longing, leaped out
of her fingers and spoke in every note of the songs she played, that she
won her triumph.

For the applause she heard, the flowers showered upon her, the money
received, she cared not at all. To reach him, show him what she could
do, ay, defy him even with the skill of her art, the majesty of her
courage, was everything.

And this was Mona Hutton, and now it was all over.

She had won her crown, fame was hers, the world of his city had bowed
before her, but he was not there, or if he had been, she knew it not.

For days this defiance of her own love lasted, and then a change came.
Little by little the leaven of his coming there softened her heart.
Perhaps he had been ill, or not in the city at all? Perhaps he had been,
as he wrote, discouraged and hopeless? Perhaps she had not understood
his letter? When love once sought excuses, they came in plenty, and she
began to upbraid herself. Why had she not sent him one word of love, one
message of faith?

And then this strange child of impulses, this girl of moods and
fancies, sombre as twilight in the gorge and sad as a whisper of sea
winds in the pine trees, betook herself away from even Jess to nurse her
heart-sickness again.

She had been proud and defiant when she faced the world, scornful while
pride lasted; now she was a contrite child, pitiful in her
self-reproaches.

Each day she went to the tower to live over that parting in tears and
heartache, and then to the cave, striving to recall every word, and
look, and smile of his.

A pilgrimage to the shrine of love! A journey to the grave of hope!

Sometimes she carried her violin, but its strings remained mute.

Sometimes she fondled and kissed the sea-shells and starfish, now dry
and hard, which his hand had carried to this trysting-place.

Sometimes--yea, often, had tears fallen upon the cold stone floor of
that nook, even as our tears fall upon the grass-grown graves of those
we have lost.

And then, one day, just as the twilight had darkened the gorge, and she,
hopeless and heart-broken, leaned against the cave's cold wall, she saw
him enter the ravine.

Step by step he climbed upward until the cave was reached, and then he
knelt before her.

"Forgive me, Mona," he said gently, extending his hands, "I have loved
you always," and as he gathered her close in his a