Audrey

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!"