When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South had lost some of its charm.

Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its life from Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney’s commonplace question.

This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details but she could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised her above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrasted with the reality.

The whole day had been working up to that moment in the little arbour, when her mind, tricked or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to happiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights by the voice of reality.

The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself be over-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. Prue’s message, her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet’s letters, the little arbour, those and the magic of Vernons had worked upon her mind singly and together, exalting her into a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.

It was as though she had played the part of Juliet for a day, suffered vaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in life, known Love as Juliet had known it—for a moment.

The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter and shrivel everything.

And the strange thing was that she had no regrets.

Looking back on yesterday, the things that had happened seemed of little interest. Sleep seemed to have put an Atlantic ocean between her and them.

Coming down to breakfast she found Pinckney just coming in from the garden; he said nothing about the incident of the night before, nor did she, there were other things to talk about. Seth, one of the darkies, had been ‘kicking up shines,’ he had given impudence to Miss Pinckney that morning. Impudence to Miss Pinckney! You can scarcely conceive the meaning of that statement without a personal knowledge of Miss Pinckney, and a full understanding of the magic of her rule.

Seth was, even now, packing up the quaint contraptions he called his luggage, and old Darius, the coloured odd job man, was getting a barrow out of the tool-house to wheel the said luggage to Seth’s grandmother’s house, somewhere in the negro quarters of the town. The whole affair of the impudence and dismissal had not taken two minutes, but the effects were widespread and lasting. Dinah was weeping, the kitchen in confusion; one might have thought a death had occurred in the house, and Miss Pinckney presiding at the breakfast table was voluble and silent by turns.

“Never mind,” said Pinckney with all the light-heartedness of a man towards domestic affairs. “Seth’s not the only nigger in Charleston.”

“I’m not bothering about his going,” replied Miss Pinckney. “He was all thumbs and of no manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way he hid his nature. Time and again I’ve been good to that boy. He looked all black grin and frizzled head, nothing bad in him you’d say—and then! It’s like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and there’s Dinah going on like a fool; she’s crying because he’s going, not because he gave me impudence. Rachel’s the same, and I’m just going now to the kitchen to give them a talking to all round.”

Off she went.

“I know what that means,” said Pinckney. “It’s only once in a couple of years that there’s any trouble with servants and then—oh, my! You see Aunt Maria is not the same as other people because she loves every one dearly, and looks on the servants as part of the family. I expect she loves that black imp Seth, for all his faults, and that’s what makes her so upset.”

“Same as I was about Rafferty,” said Phyl with a little laugh.

Pinckney laughed also and their eyes met. Just like a veil swept aside, something indefinable that had lain between them, some awkwardness arising, maybe, from the Rafferty incident, vanished in that moment.

Phyl had been drawing steadily towards him lately, till, unknown to her, he had entered into the little romance of Juliet, so much so that if last night, at that magical moment when he met her on entering the gate—if at that moment he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, Love might have been born instantly from his embrace.

But the psychological moment had passed, a crisis unknown to him and almost unknown to her.

And now, as if to seal the triumph of the commonplace, suddenly, the vague reservation that had lain between them, disappeared.

“Do you know,” said he, “you taught me a lesson that day, a lesson every man ought to be taught before he leaves college.”

“What was that?” asked Phyl.

“Never to interfere in household affairs. Of course Rafferty wasn’t exactly a household affair because he belonged mostly to the stable, still he was your affair more than mine. Household affairs belong to women, and men ought to leave them alone.”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Phyl, “but all the same I was wrong. Do you know I’ve never apologised for what I said.”

“What did you say?” asked he with an artless air of having forgotten.

“Oh, I said—things, and—I apologise.”

“And I said—things, and I apologise—come on, let’s go out. I have no business this morning and I’d like to show you the town—if you’d care to come.”

“What about Miss Pinckney?” asked Phyl.

“Oh, she’s all right,” he replied. “The Seth trouble will keep her busy till lunch time and I’ll leave word we’ve gone out for a walk.”

Phyl ran upstairs and put on her hat. As they were passing through the garden the thought came to her just for a moment to show him the little arbour; then something stopped her, a feeling that this humble little secret was not hers to give away, and a feeling that Pinckney wouldn’t care. Dead lovers vanished so long and their affairs would have little interest for his practical mind.

The morning was warmer even than yesterday. The joyous, elusive, intoxicating spirit of the Southern spring was everywhere, the air seemed filled with the dust of sunbeams, filled with fragrance and lazy sounds. The very business of the street seemed part of a great universal gaiety over which the sky heat hazy beyond the Battery rose in a dome of deep, sublime tranquil blue.

They stopped to inspect the old slave market.

Then the remains of the building that had once been the old Planters Hotel held Phyl like a wizard whilst Pinckney explained its history. Here in the old days the travelling carriages had drawn up, piled with the luggage of fine folk on a visit to Charleston on business or pleasure. The Planters was known all through the Georgias and Virginia, all through the States in the days when General Washington and John C. Calhoun were living figures.

The ghost of the place held Phyl’s imagination. Just as Meeting Street seemed filled with friendly old memories on her first entering it, so did the air around the ruins of the “Planters.”

Then having paused to admire the gouty pillars of St. Michael’s they went into the church.

The silence of an empty church is a thing apart from all other silences in the world. Deeper, more complete, more filled with voices.

As they were entering a negro caretaker engaged in dusting and tidying let something fall, and as the silence closed in on the faint echo that followed the sound they stopped, just by the font to look around them. Here the spirit of spring was not. The shafts of sunlight through the windows lit the old fashioned box pews, the double decked pulpit, and the font crowned with the dove with the light of long ago. Sunday mornings of the old time assuredly had found sanctuary here and the old congregations had not yet quite departed.

The occasional noise of the caretaker as he moved from pew to pew scarcely disturbed the tranquillity, the scene was set beyond the reach of the sounds and daily affairs of this world, and the actors held in a medium unshakable as that which holds the ghostly life of bees in amber and birds in marqueterie.

“That was George Washington’s pew,” whispered Pinckney, “at least the one he sat in once. That’s the old Pinckney pew, belonged to Bures—other people sit there now. This is our pew—Vernons. The Mascarenes had it in the old days, of course.”

Phyl looked at the pew where Juliet Mascarene had sat often enough, no doubt, whilst the preacher had preached on the vanity of life, on the delusions of the world and the shortness of Time.

Many an eloquent divine had stood in the pulpit of St. Michael’s, but none have ever preached a sermon so poignant, so real, so searching as that which the old church preaches to those who care to hear.

They turned to go.

Outside Phyl was silent and Pinckney seemed occupied by thoughts of his own. They had got to that pleasant stage of intimacy where conversation can be dropped without awkwardness and picked up again haphazard, but you cannot be silent long in the streets of Charleston on a spring day. They visited the market-place and inspected the buzzards and then, somehow, without knowing it, they drifted on to the water side. Here where the docks lie deserted and the green water washes the weed grown and rotting timbers of wharves they took their seats on a baulk of timber to rest and contemplate things.

“There used to be ships here once,” said he. “Lots of ships—but that was before the war.”

He was silent and Phyl glanced sideways at him, wondering what was in his mind. She soon found out. A struggle was going on between his two selves, his business self that demanded up-to-dateness, bustle, and the energetic conduct of affairs, and his other self that was content to let things lie, to see Charleston just as she was, unspoiled by the thing we call Business Prosperity. It was a battle between the South and the North in him.

He talked it out to her. Went into details, pointed to Galveston and New Orleans, those greedy sea mouths that swallow the goods of the world and give out cotton, whilst Charleston lay idle, her wharves almost deserted, her storehouses empty.

He spoke almost vehemently, spoke as a business man speaks of wasted chances and things neglected. Then, when he had finished, the girl put in her word.

“Well,” said she, “it may be so but I don’t want it any different from what it is.”

Pinckney laughed, the laugh of a man who is confessing a weakness.

“I don’t know that I do either,” said he.

It was rank blasphemy against Business. At the club you would often find him bemoaning the business decay of the city he loved, but here, sitting by the girl on the forsaken wharf, in the sunshine, the feeling suddenly came to him that there was something here that business would drive away. Something better than Prosperity.

It was as though he were looking at things for a moment through her eyes.

They came back through the sunlit streets to find Miss Pinckney recovered from the Seth business, and after luncheon that day, assisted by Dinah and the directions of Miss Pinckney, Phyl’s hair “went up.”

“It’s beautiful,” said the old lady, as she contemplated the result, “and more like Juliet than ever. Take the glass and look at yourself.”

Phyl did.

She did not see the beauty but she saw the change. Her childhood had vanished as though some breath had blown it away in the magic mirror.