The green banks went by, and the creek began to widen.  “Where are you going?” called the trader.  “Wheresoever you go, at the end of your path stand my village and my wigwam.  You cannot stay all day in that boat.  If you come not back at the bidden hour, Darden’s squaw will beat you.  Come over, Morning Light, come over, and take me in your boat, and tie your hair with my gift.  I will not hurt you.  I will tell you the French love songs that my father sang to my mother.  I will speak of land that I have bought (oh, I have prospered, ma’m’selle!), and of a house that I mean to build, and of a woman that I wish to put in the house,—­a Sunshine in the Dark to greet me when I come from my hunting in the great forests beyond the falls, from my trading with the nation of the Tuscaroras, with the villages of the Monacans.  Come over to me, Morning Light!”

The creek widened and widened, then doubled a grassy cape all in the shadow of a towering sycamore.  Beyond the point, crowning the low green slope of the bank, and topped with a shaggy fell of honeysuckle and ivy, began a red brick wall.  Half way down its length it broke, and six shallow steps led up to an iron gate, through whose bars one looked into a garden.  Gazing on down the creek past the farther stretch of the wall, the eye came upon the shining reaches of the river.

Audrey turned the boat’s head toward the steps and the gate in the wall.  The man on the opposite shore let fall an oath.

“So you go to Fair View house!” he called across the stream.  “There are only negroes there, unless”—­he came to a pause, and his face changed again, and out of his eyes looked the spirit of some hot, ancestral French lover, cynical, suspicious, and jealously watchful—­“unless their master is at home,” he ended, and laughed.

Audrey touched the wall, and over a great iron hook projecting therefrom threw a looped rope, and fastened her boat.

“I stay here until you come forth!” swore Hugon from across the creek.  “And then I follow you back to where you must moor the boat.  And then I shall walk with you to the minister’s house.  Until we meet again, ma’m’selle!”

Audrey answered not, but sped up the steps to the gate.  A sick fear lest it should be locked possessed her; but it opened at her touch, disclosing a long, sunny path, paved with brick, and shut between lines of tall, thick, and smoothly clipped box.  The gate clanged to behind her; ten steps, and the boat, the creek, and the farther shore were hidden from her sight.  With this comparative bliss came a faintness and a trembling that presently made her slip down upon the warm and sunny floor, and lie there, with her face within her arm and the tears upon her cheeks.  The odor of the box wrapped her like a mantle; a lizard glided past her; somewhere in open spaces birds were singing; finally a greyhound came down the path, and put its nose into the hollow of her hand.