Audrey

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?"