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 arms, God's whisper of life and love eternal spoke from those granite walls.