“None!” she answered, with sudden passion.  “Nor kindness then!  Why went you not some other way?”

“Shall I tell you why I was there that night,—­why I left my companions and came riding back to the cabin in the valley?”

She uncovered her eyes, “I thought—­I thought then—­that you were sent”—­

He looked at her with strange compassion.  “My own will sent me....  When, that sunny afternoon, we spurred from the valley toward the higher mountains, we left behind us a forest flower, a young girl of simple sweetness, with long dark hair,—­like yours, Audrey....  It was to pluck that flower that I deserted the expedition, that I went back to the valley between the hills.”

Her eyes dilated, and her hands very slowly rose to press her temples, to make a shadow from which she might face the cup of trembling he was pouring for her.

“Molly!” she said, beneath her breath.

He nodded.  “Well, Death had gathered the flower....  Accident threw across my path a tinier blossom, a helpless child.  Save you then, care for you then, I must, or I had been not man, but monster.  Did I care for you tenderly, Audrey?  Did I make you love me with all your childish heart?  Did I become to you father and mother and sister and fairy prince?  Then what were you to me in those old days?  A child fanciful and charming, too fine in all her moods not to breed wonder, to give the feeling that Nature had placed in that mountain cabin a changeling of her own.  A child that one must regard with fondness and some pity,—­what is called a dear child.  Moreover, a child whose life I had saved, and to whom it pleased me to play Providence.  I was young, not hard of heart, sedulous to fold back to the uttermost the roseleaves of every delicate and poetic emotion, magnificently generous also, and set to play my life au grand seigneur.  To myself assume a responsibility which with all ease might have been transferred to an Orphan Court, to put my stamp upon your life to come, to watch you kneel and drink of my fountain of generosity, to open my hand and with an indulgent smile shower down upon you the coin of pleasure and advantage,—­why, what a tribute was this to my own sovereignty, what subtle flattery of self-love, what delicate taste of power!  Well, I kissed you good-by, and unclasped your hands from my neck, chided you, laughed at you, fondled you, promised all manner of pretty things and engaged you never 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.