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!”

They had risen and now with her head upon his breast and his arm about her, they stood in the heart of the soft radiance of many candles.  His face was bowed upon the dark wonder of her hair; when at last he lifted his eyes, they chanced to fall upon the one uncurtained window.  Audrey, feeling his slight, quickly controlled start, turned within his arm and also saw the face of Jean Hugon, pressed against the glass, staring in upon them.

Before Haward could reach the window the face was gone.  A strip of moonlight, some leafless bashes, beyond, the blank wall of the theatre,—­that was all.  Raising the sash, Haward leaned forth until he could see the garden at large.  Moonlight still and cold, winding paths, and shadows of tree and shrub and vine, but no sign of living creature.  He closed the window and drew the curtain across, then turned again to Audrey.  “A phantom of the night,” he said, and laughed.

She was standing in the centre of the room, with her red dress gleaming in the candlelight.  Her brow beneath its mock crown had no lines of care, and her wonderful eyes smiled upon him.  “I have no fear of it,” she answered.  “That is strange, is it not, when I have feared it for so long?  I have no other fear to-night than that I shall outlive your love for me.”

“I will love you until the stars fall,” he said.

“They are falling to-night.  When you are without the door look up, and you may see one pass swiftly down the sky.  Once I watched them from the dark river”—­

“I will love you until the sun grows old,” he said.  “Through life and death, through heaven or hell, past the beating of my heart, while lasts my soul!...  Audrey, Audrey!”