a figure standing half in shadow and half in moonlight. For
a moment he was startled, fancying it a stranger, then he saw that it was
Phyl.

"Hullo," said he. "Why, Phyl, what are you doing here?"

The commonplace question shattered everything like a false note in music.

"Nothing," she answered. Then without a word more she ran past him and
vanished into the house.

Pinckney cast the stump of his cigar away.

"What on earth is the matter with her now?" said he to himself. "What on
earth have I done?"

The word she had uttered carried half a sob with it, it might have been
the last word of a quarrel.

He stood for a moment glancing around. The wild idea had entered his mind
that she had been there to meet some one and that his intrusion had put
her out.

But there was no one in the garden; nothing but the trees and the flowers,
wind shaken and lit by the moon, the same placid moon that had lit the
garden of Vernons for the lovers of whom he knew nothing except by
hearsay, and for whom he cared nothing at all.

CHAPTER VIII

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