"I had awaked," she said, in a low voice. "You were to me a stranger, and I feared you."
"And at Westover?"
"A stranger."
"Here in Williamsburgh, when by dint of much striving I saw you, when I wrote to you, when at last you sent me that letter, that piteous and cruel letter, Audrey?"
For one moment her dark eyes met his, then fell to her clasped hands. "A stranger," she said.
"The letter was many weeks ago. I have been alone with my thoughts at Fair View. And to-night, Audrey?"
"A stranger," she would have answered, but her voice broke. There were shadows under her eyes; her lifted face had in it a strained, intent expectancy as though she saw or heard one coming.
"A stranger," he acquiesced. "A foreigner in your world of dreams and shadows. No prince, Audrey, or great white knight and hero. Only a gentleman of these latter days, compact like his fellows of strength and weakness; now very wise and now the mere finger-post of folly; set to travel his own path; able to hear above him in the rarer air the trumpet call, but choosing to loiter on the lower slopes. In addition a man who loves at last, loves greatly, with a passion that shall ennoble. A stranger and your lover, Audrey, come to say farewell."
Her voice came like an echo, plaintive and clear and from far away: "Farewell."
"How steadily do I stand here to say farewell!" he said. "Yet I am eaten of my passion. A fire burns me, a voice within me ever cries aloud. I am whirled in a resistless wind.... Ah, my love, the garden at Fair View! The folded rose that will never bloom, the dial where linger the heavy hours, the heavy, heavy, heavy hours!"