One evening, a few weeks after the auction, Winn, in his new occupation, was detailed to report one of those affairs in high life where wealth gathered to display its gowns, and fops, in evening dress, uttered flattering nothings to beauty in undress. A crush of fashionable people who ate, drank, danced, simpered, and smirked until the wee small hours and then went home to curry one another's reputation and conduct.

Winn, not in the swim, was made duly welcome by virtue of his errand there, and, furnished with a list of the ladies' names and costumes by the hostess (not forgetting her own), was about to depart when he was accosted by Ethel Sherman.

He had noticed her first, surrounded by gentlemen, and feeling he might be one too many, kept away.

"Why, Winn," she said, coming to his side and smiling graciously as she extended her hand, "I am glad to see you. How do you happen to be here?"

"Business," he answered laconically; "I am a reporter now."

"Yes, I heard so from your aunt. You have not favored me with a call now for weeks," she said, "and you are a naughty boy to neglect me."

"You are looking charming, as usual," he answered, glancing at her exquisite costume, very dÉcolletÉ, and feeling that it was what he must say.

"Of course," she replied, "every man feels that he must say that, but you needn't. Compliments are like perfume, to be inhaled, not swallowed; so let the rest utter them, and you can spare me. I'd rather know how you are getting on."

"Fairly well," he answered coolly, for he had really kept away from her for weeks from a lurking sense of danger to his own feelings. "It is an occupation that keeps me busy and makes a living, that is all. It may lead to something better."

"I read your splendid exposÉ of Weston & Hill," she continued, still smiling admiration, "and it did my heart good. I wish Weston could see it. And that poor widow whose plight you described—it was pitiful."

"Only a sample case of the evil wrought by such as Weston," Winn answered modestly. "I wish I knew where he is; I'd mail him a marked copy of the paper."

Then, as some one came up to claim her for a dance, she said hurriedly, "I must leave you now, but please promise to call to-morrow evening, I've lots I want to ask you."

And Winn, yielding to the magic of her luring eyes, promised and went his way.

It was after midnight before he finished his column account of this affair, and turning it over to the night editor, left the newspaper office.

The streets were deserted, only now and then some late worker like himself hurrying homeward; and as he pushed on, his footsteps echoed between the brick walls of the narrow street he was following. Somehow their clatter carried his thoughts back to Rockhaven and one night when they had sounded so loud on the plank walk there. When his room was reached he lighted a cigar, and as once before, when he had gone to the tower on Norse Hill to commune with himself, he fell into a revery.

Now, as then, it was to balance in his mind one woman's face and one woman's influence against another's.

He saw Mona as she was then, as she had been to him for months, a sweet, simple, untutored girl, with the eyes of a Madonna and the soul of a saint. He saw her in the cave, once fern-carpeted by her tender thought, and once again heard the notes from her violin quivering in that rock-walled gorge.

And now it was all ended!

Then came this other woman's face and form,—a brilliant, self-contained, self-poised, cultured exotic, knowing men's weaknesses and keen to reach and sway them. A social sun, where the other was but a pale and tender moon.

But Winn's heart was still true to Rockhaven, and the ecstatic moment, when he had held Mona close in his arms, still seemed a sacred bond.

"I'll never believe it is to end thus," he thought, "until I go there and hear it from her lips."

But he kept his promise and called on Ethel the next evening.

She had been charming always; now she was fascinating, for somehow it had come to this conquest-loving woman, that Winn's heart was elsewhere, and that was a spur.

Then beyond was a better thought, for the very indifference that piqued her also awoke respect, and he seemed to her, as she had told him, an eagle among jackdaws.

"I am glad you have found an occupation," she said, as he once more sat in her parlor, "but I wish it were less menial. You have outgrown servitude since you went to the island. What has wrought the change? Was it the sea winds?"

"Maybe," answered Winn, "or constantly looking out upon a boundless ocean. That always dwarfs humanity to me. But I have some business to take up my mind. I was sadly discontented until this opening came."

"I wish you had kept that money in your own hands," she said confidentially, "and used it to buy an interest in a paper. When I read your description of the reception this morning, it seemed to me that was your forte."

"Thanks for your compliment," he answered, "and I only wish you edited the paper now. But if you did, my pencil-pushing wouldn't strike you that way."

"But it really did," she continued, "and the best of it was what you didn't say, knowing, as I do, how you regard such affairs. Hiding your own opinion so well was fine art."

"I wasn't expected to express my views," he asserted, "but to flatter you all judiciously; that's what makes a paper popular."

"And do you think I wanted to be flattered?" she asked.

"Certainly," he replied, "you are a woman."

Ethel laughed.

"Personally, you are wrong; in general, right. I receive so much of it, it wearies me, knowing as I do how insincere it all is, but most of my sex, I'll admit, feel otherwise. But tell me why you haven't called for three weeks?"

It was a question he could not answer truthfully, and like all the polite world he evaded it.

"My work is my excuse," he said; "and then I've not been in a mood for sociability."

Ethel looked at him long and earnestly, reading him, as she read most men, like an open book.

"Winn, my dear old friend," she said at last, in the open-your-heart tone so natural to her, "I made you a promise long ago and I shall keep it, so forgive my question. But you needn't fear me. I want to be your friend and feel you are mine, in spite of the old score and this new influence. And when you are ready to trust me, no one in the world shall be more worthy of it."

Then they drifted to commonplaces: she, as all women will, relating the gossip of her set and chatting of the latest opera, what was on at the theatres and the like. Now and then she let fall a word of quiet flattery, or what was more potent, one by inference; for Ethel Sherman was past-mistress in that art. And all the while she looked at Winn, smiling deference to his opinions and pointing hers about others with a keen wit so natural to her.

She played and sang, selecting as once before (and unfortunately, perhaps) the songs that carried his thoughts to Rockhaven.

So charming was she in all this, when she chose, that the evening sped by while Winn was unconscious of its lapse.

"I wish you would be more neighborly," she said, when he rose to go; "there are so few men in my set whom I can speak to as freely as you, and besides I want to watch your progress toward an editorial chair. Forget your old grudge, and let us be good friends once more."

And when he was gone, and she ready to retire, she looked long and earnestly at a photograph of him she had scarce glanced at thrice in three years. "I wish he were rich," she sighed; "what a delightful lover he would make!"