It was the first coquettish word she had so far uttered, and Winn did not like it.
"That does not sound like you, Mona," he replied soberly, "your greatest charm, and it is a charm, is sincerity. When you speak that way you remind me of the ladies in my world, and I do not like them."
"And if I am always truthful," she said, "you will call me simple, won't you?"
"No, I told you I admired that in you," he said, "but you have not answered my question, Mona. Have you never had a lover?"
"I have had two or three," she replied again, looking sober, "at least they said they loved me, but I did not return it."
And as Winn looked at the girlish figure, just showing the rounded curves of womanhood beneath its close-fitting blue flannel gown, and at the pansy face with eyes like one of those purple petals, fixed on him, he, manlike, thought how sweet it would be to moisten them with the dew of love's light and feel the touch of her velvety lips.
But should he try for that prize, and did he want it, if he could win it?
The lowering sun had thrown the shadows of the spruce trees adown the gorge, the wind scarce ruffled the ocean and only the low lullaby of its undulations crept up the ravine. It was the parting of day and night, the good-by of sunshine, the peace of summer twilight.
"Now, Mona," he half whispered, as if fearing to scare the mermaids away, "play 'Annie Laurie'!"
And lost to the world, he watched her bending over and caressing that old brown fiddle, even as a mother would press her baby's face to her own, again and once again came that whisper of a love that never dies, a refrain that holds the pathos of life and parting in its chords, a love cry centuries old, as sweet as heaven, as sad as death.