Haward caught her by the wrists, bruising them in his grasp.  “Audrey, Audrey!  Let these fancies be!  If we love each other”—­

“If!” she echoed, and pulled her hands away.  Her voice was strange, her eyes were bright and strained, her face was burning.  “But if not, what then?  And how should I love you who are a stranger to me?  Oh, a generous stranger who, where he thinks he has done a wrong, would repair the damage.”  Her voice broke; she flung back her head and pressed her hands against her throat.  “You have done me no wrong,” she said.  “If you had, I would forgive you, would say good-by to you, would go my way.... as I am going now.  Let me pass, sir!”

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?”

“Yes,” she answered, and thought she spoke the truth.