to forget me--and sailed away upon the Golden Rose to meet my crowded years with their wine and roses, upas shadows and apples of Sodom. How long before I forgot you, Audrey? A year and a day, perhaps. I protest that I cannot remember exactly.” He slightly changed his position, but came no nearer to her. It was growing quiet in the street beyond the curtained windows. One window was bare, but it gave only upon an unused nook of the garden where were merely the moonlight and some tall leafless bushes. “I came back to Virginia,” he said, “and I looked for and found you in the heart of a flowering wood.... All that you imagined me to be, Audrey, that was I not. Knight-errant, paladin, king among men,--what irony, child, in that strange dream and infatuation of thine! I was--I am--of my time and of myself, and he whom that day you thought me had not then nor afterwards form or being. I wish you to be perfect in this lesson, Audrey. Are you so?” “Yes,” she sighed. Her hands had fallen; she was looking at him with slowly parting lips, and a strange expression in her eyes. He went on quietly as before, every feature controlled to impassivity and his arms lightly folded: “That is well. Between the day when I found you again and a night in the Palace yonder lies a summer,--a summer! To me all the summers that ever I had or will have,--ten thousand summers! Now tell me how I did in this wonderful summer.” “Ignobly,” she answered. He bowed his head gravely. “Ay, Audrey, it is a good word.” With a quick sigh he left his place, and walking to the uncurtained window stood there looking out upon the strip of moonlight and the screen of bushes; but when he turned again to the room his face and bearing were as impressive as before in their fine, still gravity, their repose of determination. “And that evening by the river when you fled from me to Hugon”-- “I had awaked,” she said, in a low voice. “You were to me a stranger, and I feared you.” “And at Westover?” “A stranger.” “Here in Williamsburgh, when by dint of much striving I saw you, when I wrote to you, when at last you sent me that letter, that piteous and cruel letter, Audrey?” For one moment her dark eyes met his, then fell to her clasped hands. “A stranger,” she said. “The letter was many weeks ago. I have been alone with my thoughts at Fair View. And to-night, Audrey?” “A stranger,” she would have answered, but her voice broke. There were shadows under her eyes; her lifted face had in it a strained, intent expectancy as though she saw or heard one coming.