any within.

CHAPTER XXIX

AMOR VINCIT

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 paeans. 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 s