he knows, and is sorry.’  It was make-believe,—­for you thought that I was happy, did you not?—­but it helped me very much.  I was only a child, you know, and I was so very lonely.  I could not think of mother and Molly, for when I did I saw them as—­as I had seen them last.  The dark scared me, until I found that I could pretend that you were holding my hand, as you used to do when night came in the valley.  After a while I had only to put out my hand, and yours was there waiting for it.  I hope that you can understand—­I want you to know how large is my debt....  As I grew, so did the debt.  When I was a girl it was larger than when I was a child.  Do you know with whom I have lived all these years?  There is the minister, who comes reeling home from the crossroads ordinary, who swears over the dice, who teaches cunning that he calls wisdom, laughs at man and scarce believes in God.  His hand is heavy; this is his mark.”  She held up her bruised wrist to the light, then let the hand drop.  When she spoke of the minister, she made a gesture toward the shadows growing ever thicker and darker in the body of the house.  It was as though she saw him there, and was pointing him out.  “There is the minister’s wife,” she said, and the motion of her hand again accused the shadows.  “Oh, their roof has sheltered me; I have eaten of their bread.  But truth is truth.  There is the schoolmaster with the branded hands.  He taught me, you know.  There is”—­she was looking with wide eyes into the deepest of the shadows—­“there is Hugon!” Her voice died away.  Haward did not move or speak, and for a minute there was silence in the dusky playhouse.  Audrey broke it with a laugh, soft, light, and clear, that came oddly upon the mood of the hour.  Presently she was speaking again:  “Do you think it strange that I should laugh?  I laughed to think I have escaped them all.  Do you know that they call me a dreamer?  Once, deep in the woods, I met the witch who lives at the head of the creek.  She told me that I was a dream child, and that all my life was a dream, and I must pray never to awake; but I do not think she knew, for all that she is a witch.  They none of them know,—­none, none!  If I had not dreamed, as they call it,—­if I had watched, and listened, and laid to heart, and become like them,—­oh, then I should have died of your look when at last you came!  But I ‘dreamed;’ and in that long dream you, though you were overseas, you showed me, little by little, that the spirit is not bond, but free,—­that it can walk the waves, and climb to the sunset and the stars.  And I found that the woods were fair, that the earth was fair and kind as when I was a little child.  And I grew to love and long for goodness.  And, day by day, I have had a life and a world where flowers bloomed, and the streams ran fresh, and there was bread indeed to eat.  And it was you that showed me the road, that opened for me the gates!”

She ceased to speak, and, turning fully toward him, took his hand and put it to her lips.  “May you be very happy!” she said.  “I thank you, sir, that when you came at last you did not break my dream.  The dream fell short!”