as Audrey raised her head and the light struck upon her face, he continued
more kindly than one would think so stern a seeming man could speak: "I am
sorry for you, my maid. God knows that I should know how dreadful are the
wounds of the spirit! Should you need a friend"--

Audrey shook her head. "No more friends," she said, and laughed as she had
laughed before. "They belong in dreams. When you are awake,--that is a
different thing."

The storekeeper went his way, back to the Fair View store, rowing slowly,
with a grim and troubled face, while Darden's Audrey sat still upon the
green hillock and watched the darkening river. Behind her, at no great
distance, was the glebe house; more than once she thought she heard Hugon
coming through the bushes and calling her by name. The river darkened more
and more, and in the west the sea of gold changed to plains of amethyst
and opal. There was a crescent moon, and Audrey, looking at it with eyes
that ached for the tears that would not gather, knew that once she would
have found it fair.

Hugon was coming, for she heard the twigs upon the path from the glebe
house snap beneath his tread. She did not turn or move; she would see him
soon enough, hear him soon enough. Presently his black eyes would look
into hers; it would be bird and snake over again, and the bird was tired
of fluttering. The bird was so tired that when a hand was laid on her
shoulder she did not writhe herself from under its touch; instead only
shuddered slightly, and stared with wide eyes at the flowing river. But
the hand was white, with a gleaming ring upon its forefinger, and it stole
down to clasp her own. "Audrey," said a voice that was not Hugon's.

The girl flung back her head, saw Haward's face bending over her, and with