Mona Hutton was what country people would call a strange compound: a product of a lone sea island, of its storms and the unceasing booming of billows; of days, weeks, and months spent alone, where only the ocean voiced eternity; of the whispers of winds in spruce thickets, of the gorge and the cave where she hid herself; of her own moods, sad, solemn, and contemplative. She had grown up close to God, but distant from man. The flowers blooming in her dooryard, the wild roses clinging to life between the granite ledges, the sea-gulls sailing over the cliffs, the inward rush of the white-crested waves tossing the rockweed and kelpie upward, and the starfish and anemones left by the tide had been her playmates. She had learned to depend on these and her violin for company. Lovers she had none, neither were other island young folk akin to her. Between her mother and herself, also, was a chasm. It had been opened when that unsympathetic mother forbade the violin in her house, and was never afterward bridged. Jess only understood her. Jess, with his quaint philosophy, tender heart, unselfish impulses, and love of nature, had been her spiritual and moral mentor. To him had she gone with her moods, and upon him lavished her childhood and girlhood love. And then had come a new and strangely sweet illusion, a glow of new sunshine warming her heart and adding a roseate hue to her thoughts. It was unaccountable but charming, and seemed to lend a sparkle to the sea waves, a more impressive grandeur to the limitless ocean, a tenderer beauty to the moonlight. The gorge and the cave seemed an enchanted nook in fairyland, and the old tide mill a romantic ruin. Then had come the climax of this strange intoxication, the one ecstatic moment when this magician over her thoughts, this Prince Perfect, had entwined his arms about her and whispered, "I love you." Repel him she could not, neither did she care to do so. It was to her as if the gates of another world were opened; and in the wondrous thrill of his lips she forgot herself, life, and God, even. And then the cold and cruel message that said to her, "Forget me as I must you." It was a summer-day dream, with no hope of renewal. Then came the long fight against her own heart's desire, the months of hopeless hope, and, at last, the will to win her way to the world's applause. He was there! He might, must, see or hear of her! He had said the world would listen entranced if she had but the courage to stand before them! And the old Carver will that was in her now nerved her to her trial. And in the days and weeks of the strange new life while she hoped, and yet feared, to meet him, that one thought was her staff. It was with her by day and by night, a silent defiance of love, a revenge for her pain. When the supreme moment of her trial came and she stood before that sea of faces, only her young, trembling body was there, her every thought, her heart and soul even, were back in the cave, and he was listening.