call, long after they had all left him, Pinckney continued to
pace up and down restlessly in the dark. Pinckney had never seen a
woman like this. After all, he was very young; and he had, in his
heart, supposed that the doubts and delights of his soul were peculiar
to men alone. He thought all women--at all events, all young and worthy
women--regarded life and its accepted forms as an accomplished fact,
not to be questioned, and, indeed, too delightful to need it. The young
South Carolinian, in his ambitions, in his heart-longings and
heart-sickenings, in his poetry, even in his emotions, had always been
lonely; so that his loneliness had grown to seem to him as merely part
of the day's work. The best women, he knew, where the best housewives;
they were a rest and a benefit for the war-weary man, much as might be
a pretty child, a bed of flowers, a strain of music. With Emily Austin
he should find all this; and he loved her as good, pretty, amiable,
perfect in her way. But now, with Miss Warfield--it had seemed that he
was not even lonely.

Pinckney did not see her again for a week. When he met her, he avoided
her; she certainly avoided him. Breeze, meantime, gave a dinner. He
gave it on his yacht, and gave it to men alone. Pinckney was of the
number.

The next day there was a driving party; it was to drive out of town to
Purgatory, a pretty place, where there is a brook in a deep ravine with
a verdant meadow-floor; and there they were to take food and drink, as
is the way of humanity in pretty places. Now it so happened that the
Austins, Miss Warfield, Breeze, and Pinckney were going to drive in a
party, the Austins and Miss Warfield having carriages of their own; but
at the last moment Breeze did not appear, and Emily Austin was
incapacitated by a headache. She insisted, as is the way of loving
women, that "Charles should not lose it"; for to her it was one of
life's pleasures, and such pleasures satisfied her soul. (It may be
that she gave more of her soul to life's duties than did Charles, and
life's pleasures were thus adequate to the remainder; I do not know.)
Probably Miles Breeze also had a headache; at all events, he did not,
at the last moment, appear. It was supposable that he would turn up at
the picnic; Mrs. Austin joined her daughter's entreaty; Miss Warfield
was left unattended; in fine, Pinckney went with her.

Miss Warfield had a solid little phaeton with two stout ponies: she
drove herself. For some