but in a far country, and a fair and great city.  Love! love! and death for love! and her own face in the mirror gazing at her with eyes of that long-dead Greek.  It was the exaltation and the dream, mournful, yet not without its luxury, that ended her every day.  When the candle burned low, when the face looked but dimly from the glass, then would she rise and quench the flame, and lay herself down to sleep, with the moonlight upon her crossed hands and quiet brow.

* * * * *

She passed through the grape arbor, and opened the door at which Haward had knocked that September night of the Governor’s ball.  She was in Mistress Stagg’s long room; at that hour it should have been lit only by a dying fire and a solitary candle.  Now the fire was low enough, but the room seemed aflare with myrtle tapers.  Audrey, coming from the dimness without, shaded her eyes with her hand.  The heavy door shut to behind her; unseeing still she moved toward the fire, but in a moment let fall her hand and began to wonder at the unwonted lights.  Mistress Stagg was yet in the playhouse; who then had lit these candles?  She turned, and saw Haward standing with folded arms between her and the door.

The silence was long.  He was Marmaduke Haward with all his powers gathered, calm, determined, so desperate to have done with this thing, to at once and forever gain his own and master fate, that his stillness was that of deepest waters, his cool equanimity that of the gamester who knows how will fall the loaded dice.  Dressed with his accustomed care, very pale, composed and quiet, he faced her whose spirit yet lingered in a far city, who in the dreamy exaltation of this midnight hour was ever half Audrey of the garden, half that other woman in a dress of red silk, with jewels in her hair, who, love’s martyr, had exulted, given all, and died.

“How did you come here?” she breathed at last.  “You said that you would come never again.”

“After to-night, never again,” he answered.  “But now, Audrey, this once again, this once again!”

Gazing past him she made a movement toward the door.  He shook his head.  “This is my hour, Audrey.  You may not leave the room, nor will Mistress Stagg enter it.  I will not touch you, I will come no nearer to you.  Stand there in silence, if you choose, or cover the sight of me from your eyes, while for my own ease, my own unhappiness, I say farewell.”

“Farewell!” she echoed.  “Long ago, at Westover, that was said between you and me....  Why do you come like a ghost to keep me and peace apart?”

He did not answer, and she locked her hands across her brow that burned beneath the heavy circlet of mock gems.  “Is it kind?” she demanded, with a sob in her voice.  “Is it kind to trouble me so, to keep me here”—­

“Was I ever kind?” he asked.  “Since the night when I followed you, a child, and caught you from the ground when you fell between the corn rows, what kindness, Audrey?”