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.
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.