"There was one like a wall shutting out the sun when he went down,"
answered Audrey. "It was black and grim, and the light flared like a fire
behind it. And there was the one above which the moon rose. It was sharp,
pointing like a finger to heaven, and I liked it best. Do you remember how
large was the moon pushing up behind the pine-trees? We sat on the dark
hillside watching it, and you told me beautiful stories, while the moon
rose higher and higher and the mockingbirds began to sing."
Haward remembered not, but he said that he did so. "The moon is full
again," he continued, "and last night I heard a mockingbird in the garden.
I will come in the barge to-morrow evening, and the negroes shall row us
up and down the river--you and me and Mistress Deborah--between the sunset
and the moonrise. Then it is lonely and sweet upon the water. The roses
can be smelled from the banks, and if you will speak to the mockingbirds
we shall have music, dryad Audrey, brown maid of the woods!"
Audrey's laugh, was silver-clear and sweet, like that of a forest nymph
indeed. She was quite happy again, with all her half-formed doubts and
fears allayed. They had never been of him,--only of herself. The two sat
within the green and swaying fountain of the willow, and time went by on
eagle wings. Too soon came the slave to call them to the house; the time
within, though spent in the company of Darden and his wife, passed too
soon; too soon came the long shadows of the afternoon and Haward's call
for his horse.
Audrey watched him ride away, and the love light was in her eyes. She did
not know that it was so. That night, in her bare little room, when the
candle was out, she kneeled by the window and looked at the stars. There
was one very fair and golden, an empress of the night. "That is the
princess," said Audrey, and smiled upon the peerless star. Far from that
light, scarce free from the murk of the horizon, shone a little star,
companionless in the night. "And that is I," said Audrey, and smiled upon
herself.