The smile upon her face was very sweet, very pure and noble.  She would have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve.  “Stay awhile!” he cried.  “I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the still, white flame!  Audrey, Audrey, Audrey!  Do you know what a pretty name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair that a queen might envy?  Westover has been dull, child.”

Audrey shook her head and smiled, and thought that he was laughing at her.  A vision of Evelyn, as Evelyn had looked that morning, passed before her.  She did not believe that he had found Westover dull.

“I am coming to Fair View, dark Audrey,” he went on.  “In its garden there are roses yet blooming for thy hair; there are sweet verses calling to be read; there are cool, sequestered walks to be trodden, with thy hand in mine,—­thy hand in mine, little maid.  Life is but once; we shall never pass this way again.  Drink the cup, wear the roses, live the verses!  Of what sing all the sweetest verses, dark-eyed witch, forest Audrey?”

“Of love,” said Audrey simply.  She had freed her hand from his clasp, and her face was troubled.  She did not understand; never had she seen him like this, with shining eyes and hot, unsteady touch.

“There is the ball at the Palace to-morrow night,” he went on.  “I must be there, for a fair lady and I are to dance together.”  He smiled.  “Poor Audrey, who hath never been to a ball; who only dances with the elves, beneath the moon, around a beechen tree!  The next day I will go to Fair View, and you will be at the glebe house, and we will take up the summer where we left it, that weary month ago.”

“No, no,” said Audrey hurriedly, and shook her head.  A vague and formless trouble had laid its cold touch upon her heart; it was as though she saw a cloud coming up, but it was no larger than a man’s hand, and she knew not what it should portend, nor that it would grow into a storm.  He was strange to-day,—­that she felt; but then all her day since the coming of Evelyn had been sad and strange.

The shaft of sunshine was gone from the stage, and all the house was in shadow.  Audrey descended the two or three steps leading into the pit, and Haward followed her.  Side by side they left the playhouse, and found themselves in the garden, and also in the presence of five or six ladies and gentlemen, seated upon the grass beneath a mulberry-tree, or engaged in rifling the grape arbor of its purple fruit.

The garden was a public one, and this gay little party, having tired of the Indian spectacle, had repaired hither to treat of its own affairs.  Moreover, it had been there, scattered upon the grass in view of the playhouse door, for the better part of an hour.  Concerned with its own wit and laughter, it had caught no sound of low voices issuing from the theatre; and for the two who talked within, all outward noise had ranked as coming from the distant, crowded fields.