"Yes, I have heard," she answered quietly, her eyes still on him, "nothing happens here that all do not know in a few hours." And Winn, with the burden of dread that like a pall oppressed him just then, wondered how long it would take for all to hear what he or Jess could utter in five words. "Why did you come here, Mona, if you were lonesome?" he said, anxious to change the subject. "It's the last spot on the island you should visit if lonely." Mona colored slightly; "I always go to some lonely spot when I feel sad," she said, unwilling to admit the real reason for her coming here. "And that is where you are wrong," put in Winn, forcing a laugh and seating himself beside her. "When I am blue I go to Jess or else take a tramp as I did to-day," he added hastily. Mona still watched him furtively and with an intuitive feeling that he was concealing something. "I wish I knew how to play the violin," he continued, looking across the harbor to where a dory had just started toward the village, "it must be, as your uncle says, 'a heap o' comfort' when one is lonesome." "It has been to him all his life long," she answered a little sadly, "and is now." "And to you as well," he interposed, "it has helped you pass many a long hour, I fancy. Do you know," he continued, anxious to talk about anything except his present mood, "I've thought so many times of that day I first heard you playing in the 'Devil's Oven,' and what a strange place it was to hide yourself in. You are a queer girl, Mona, and unlike any one I ever knew. I wish I were an artist, I'd like to make a picture of you in that cave." Mona looked pleased. "You would make a picture," he added, smiling at her, "that the whole world would look at with interest; I'd have you holding your violin and looking out over the wide ocean with those sphinx-like eyes of yours, just as if the world and all its follies had no interest for you." "And what is a sphinx?" asked Mona. "A woman that no man understands," he answered carelessly. "There are a few such, and they are the only ones who interest men any length of time." "And am I like one of them?" queried the girl. "Oh, no," he answered, "except your eyes, and they are absolutely unreadable. Beyond them you are as easily understood as a flower that only needs the sun's smiles." It was a bit of his poetic imagery faintly understood by Mona. "You must not mind my odd comparison," he continued, noticing her curious look, "it's only a fancy of mine, and then, you are an odd stick, as they used to say up in the country where I was born." "And so you were not born in the city," she said with sudden interest. "What Uncle Jess has told me and what you have said has made me hate the city." "I thought you said once you envied the city girls who came here in yachts," laughed Winn. "I might like to dress as they do," she answered, a little confused, "but not to live where they do."