By now it was early spring in Virginia, and a time of balm and pleasantness.  The season had not entered into its complete heritage of gay hues, sweet odors, song, and wealth of bliss.  Its birthday robe was yet a-weaving, its coronal of blossoms yet folded buds, its choristers not ready with their fullest pæans.  But everywhere was earnest of future riches.  In the forest the bloodroot was in flower, and the bluebird and the redbird flashed from the maple that was touched with fire to the beech just lifted from a pale green fountain.  In Mistress Stagg’s garden daffodils bloomed, and dim blue hyacinths made sweet places in the grass.  The sun lay warm upon upturned earth, blackbirds rose in squadrons and darkened the yet leafless trees, and every wind brought rumors of the heyday toward which the earth was spinning.  The days were long and sweet; at night a moon came up, and between it and the earth played soft and vernal airs.  Then a pale light flooded the garden, the shells bordering its paths gleamed like threaded pearls, and the house showed whiter than a marble sepulchre.  Mild incense, cool winds, were there, but quiet came fitfully between the bursts of noise from the lit theatre.

On such a night as this Audrey, clothed in red silk, with a band of false jewels about her shadowy hair, slipped through the stage door into the garden, and moved across it to the small white house and rest.  Her part in the play was done; for all their storming she would not stay.  Silence and herself alone, and the mirror in her room; then, sitting before the glass, to see in it darkly the woman whom she had left dead upon the boards yonder, no, not yonder, 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?”

“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.

“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.

“A stranger,” he acquiesced.  “A foreigner in your world of dreams and shadows.  No prince, Audrey, or great white knight and hero.  Only a gentleman of these latter days, compact like his fellows of strength and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes.  In addition a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a passion that shall ennoble.  A stranger and your lover, Audrey, come to say farewell.”

Her voice came like an echo, plaintive and clear and from far away:  “Farewell.”

“How steadily do I stand here to say farewell!” he said.  “Yet I am eaten of my passion.  A fire burns me, a voice within me ever cries aloud.  I am whirled in a resistless wind....  Ah, my love, the garden at Fair View!  The folded rose that will never bloom, the dial where linger the heavy hours, the heavy, heavy, heavy hours!”

“The garden,” she whispered.  “I smell the box....  The path was all in sunshine.  So quiet, so hushed....  I went a little farther, and I heard your voice where you sat and read and read of Eloisa.... Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!”

“The last time the last farewell!” he said.  “When the Golden Rose is far at sea, when the winds blow, when the stars drift below the verge, when the sea speaks, then may I forget you, may the vision of you pass!  Now at Fair View it passes not; it dwells.  Night and day I behold you, the woman that I love, the woman that I love in vain!”

“The Golden Rose!” she answered.  “The sea....  Alas!”

Her voice had risen into a cry.  The walls of the room were gone, the air pressed upon her heavily, the lights wavered, the waters were passing over her as they had passed that night of the witch’s hut.  How far away the bank upon which he stood!  He spoke to her, and his voice came faintly as from that distant shore or from the deck of a swiftly passing ship.  “And so it is good-by, sweetheart; for why should I stay in Virginia?  Ah, if you loved me, Audrey!  But since it is not so Good-by, good-by.  This time I’ll not forget you, but I will not come again.  Good-by!”

Her lips moved, but there came no words.  A light had dawned upon her face, her hand was lifted as though to stay a sound of music.  Suddenly she turned toward him, swayed, and would have fallen but that his arm caught and upheld her.  Her head was thrown back; the soft masses of her wonderful hair brushed his cheek and shoulder; her eyes looked past him, and a smile, pure and exquisite past expression, just redeemed her face from sadness.  “Good-morrow, Love!” she said clearly and sweetly.

At the sound of her own words came to her the full realization and understanding of herself.  With a cry she freed herself from his supporting arm, stepped backward and looked at him.  The color surged over her face and throat, her eyelids drooped; while her name was yet upon his lips she answered with a broken cry of ecstasy and abandonment.  A moment and she was in his arms and their lips had met.

How quiet it was in the long room, where the myrtle candles gave out their faint perfume and the low fire leaped upon the hearth!  Thus for a time; then, growing faint with her happiness, she put up protesting hands.  He made her sit in the great chair, and knelt before her, all youth and fire, handsome, ardent, transfigured by his passion into such a lover as a queen might desire.

“Hail, Sultana!” he said, smiling, his eyes upon her diadem.  “Now you are Arpasia again, and I am Moneses, and ready, ah, most ready, to die for you.”

She also smiled.  “Remember that I am to quickly follow you.”

“When shall we marry?” he demanded.  “The garden cries out for you, my love, and I wish to hear your footstep in my house.  It hath been a dreary house, filled with shadows, haunted by keen longings and vain regrets.  Now the windows shall be flung wide and the sunshine shall pour in.  Oh, your voice singing through the rooms, your foot upon the stairs!” He took her hands and put them to his lips.  “I love as men loved of old,” he said.  “I am far from myself and my times.  When will you become my wife?”

She answered him simply, like the child that at times she seemed:  “When you will.  But I must be Arpasia again to-morrow night.  The Governor hath ordered the play repeated, and Margery Linn could not learn my part in time.”

He laughed, fingering the red silk of her hanging sleeve, feasting his eyes upon her dark beauty, so heightened and deepened in the year that had passed.  “Then play to them and to me who shall watch you well to-morrow night.  But after that to them never again! only to me, Audrey, to me when we walk in the garden at home, when we sit in the book-room and the candles are lighted.  That day in May when first you came into my garden, when first I showed you my house, when first I rowed you home with the sunshine on the water and the roses in your hair!  Love, love! do you remember?”

“Remember?” she answered, in a thrilling voice.  “When I am dead I shall yet remember!  And I will come when you want me.  After to-morrow night I will come....  Oh, cannot you hear the river?  And the walls of the box will be freshly green, and the fruit-trees all in bloom!  The white leaves drift down upon the bench beneath the cherry-tree....  I will sit in the grass at your feet.  Oh, I love you, have loved you long!”

They had risen and now with her head upon his breast and his arm about her, they stood in the heart of the soft radiance of many candles.  His face was bowed upon the dark wonder of her hair; when at last he lifted his eyes, they chanced to fall upon the one uncurtained window.  Audrey, feeling his slight, quickly controlled start, turned within his arm and also saw the face of Jean Hugon, pressed against the glass, staring in upon them.

Before Haward could reach the window the face was gone.  A strip of moonlight, some leafless bashes, beyond, the blank wall of the theatre, that was all.  Raising the sash, Haward leaned forth until he could see the garden at large.  Moonlight still and cold, winding paths, and shadows of tree and shrub and vine, but no sign of living creature.  He closed the window and drew the curtain across, then turned again to Audrey.  “A phantom of the night,” he said, and laughed.

She was standing in the centre of the room, with her red dress gleaming in the candlelight.  Her brow beneath its mock crown had no lines of care, and her wonderful eyes smiled upon him.  “I have no fear of it,” she answered.  “That is strange, is it not, when I have feared it for so long?  I have no other fear to-night than that I shall outlive your love for me.”

“I will love you until the stars fall,” he said.

“They are falling to-night.  When you are without the door look up, and you may see one pass swiftly down the sky.  Once I watched them from the dark river”

“I will love you until the sun grows old,” he said.  “Through life and death, through heaven or hell, past the beating of my heart, while lasts my soul!...  Audrey, Audrey!”

“If it is so,” she answered, “then all is well.  Now kiss me good-night, for I hear Mistress Stagg’s voice.  You will come again to-morrow?  And to-morrow night, oh, to-morrow night I shall see only you, think of only you while I play!  Good-night, good-night.”

They kissed and parted, and Haward, a happy man, went with raised face through the stillness and the moonlight to his lodging at Marot’s ordinary.  No phantoms of the night disturbed him.  He had found the philosopher’s stone, had drunk of the divine elixir.  Life was at last a thing much to be desired, and the Giver of life was good, and the summum bonum was deathless love.