Evelyn, hearing footsteps across the floor of the attic room above her own
bedchamber, arose and set wide the door; then went back to her chair by
the window that looked out upon green grass and party-colored trees and
long reaches of the shining river. "Come here, if you please," she called
to Audrey, as the latter slowly descended the stair from the room where,
half asleep, half awake, she had lain since morning.
Audrey entered the pleasant chamber, furnished with what luxury the age
afforded, and stood before the sometime princess of her dreams. "Will you
not sit down?" asked Evelyn, in a low voice, and pointed to a chair.
"I had rather stand," answered Audrey. "Why did you call me? I was on my
way"-The other's clear eyes dwelt upon her. "Whither were you going?"
"Out of your house," said Audrey simply, "and out of your life."
Evelyn folded her hands in her silken lap, and looked out upon river and
sky and ceaseless drift of colored leaves. "You can never go out of my
life," she said. "Why the power to vex and ruin was given you I do not
know, but you have used it. Why did you run away from Fair View?"
"That I might never see Mr. Haward again," answered Audrey. She held her
head up, but she felt the stab. It had not occurred to her that hers was
the power to vex and ruin; apparently that belonged elsewhere.
Evelyn turned from the window, and the two women, the princess and the
herdgirl, regarded each other. "Oh, my God!" cried Evelyn. "I did not know
that you loved him so!"
But Audrey shook her head, and spoke with calmness: "Once I loved and knew
it not, and once I loved and knew it. It was all in a dream, and now I
have waked up." She passed her hand across her brow and eyes, and pushed
back her heavy hair. It was a gesture that was common to her. To Evelyn it
brought a sudden stinging memory of the ballroom at the Palace; of how
this girl had looked in her splendid dress, with the roses in her hair; of
Haward's words at the coach door. She had not seen him since that night.
"I am going a long way," continued Audrey. "It will be as though I died. I
never meant to harm you."
The other gazed at her with wide, dry eyes, and with an unwonted color in
her cheeks. "She is beautiful," thought Audrey; then wondered how long she
must stay in this room and this house. Without the window the trees
beckoned, the light was fair upon the river; in the south hung a cloud,
silver-hued, and shaped like two mighty wings. Audrey, with her eyes upon
the cloud, thought, "If the wings were mine, I would reach the mountains
to-night."