Haward barred her way. "A stranger!" he said, beneath his breath. "Is
there then no tie between shadow and substance, dream and reality?"
"None!" answered Audrey, with defiance. "Why did you come to the
mountains, eleven years ago? What business was it of yours whether I lived
or died? Oh, God was not kind to send you there!"
"You loved me once!" he cried. "Audrey, Audrey, have I slain your love?"
"It was never yours!" she answered passionately, "It was that
other's,--that other whom I imagined, who never lived outside my dream!
Oh, let me pass, let me begone! You are cruel to keep me. I--I am so
tired."
White to the lips, Haward moved backward a step or two, but yet stood
between her and the door. Moments passed before he spoke; then, "Will you
become my wife?" he asked, in a studiously quiet voice. "Marry me, Audrey,
loving me not. Love may come in time, but give me now the right to be your
protector, the power to clear your name."
She looked at him with a strange smile, a fine gesture of scorn. "Marry
you, loving you not! That will I never do. Protector! That is a word I
have grown to dislike. My name! It is a slight thing. What matter if folk
look askance when it is only Darden's Audrey? And there are those whom an
ill fame does not frighten. The schoolmaster will still give me books to
read, and tell me what they mean. He will not care, nor the drunken
minister, nor Hugon.... I am going back to them, to Mistress Deborah and
the glebe house. She will beat me, and the minister will curse, but they
will take me in.... I will work very hard, and never look to Fair View. I
see now that I could never reach the mountains." She began to move toward
the door. He kept with her, step for step, his eyes upon her face. "You
will come no more to the glebe house," she said. "If you do, though the
mountains be far the river is near."
He put his hand upon the latch of the door. "You will rest here to-night?"
he asked gently, as of a child. "I will speak to Colonel Byrd; to-morrow
he will send some one with you down the river. It will be managed for you,
and as you wish. You will rest to-night? You go from me now to your room,
Audrey?"