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.