rowing 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 strengt