Ah, how she loved it! Had you dissected her love for Richard Pinckney you would have found a thousand living wrappings before you reached the core. Vernons, the garden, the birds, the flowers, the blue sky, the sunlight, Meeting Street, the story of Juliet, Miss Pinckney, even old Prue. Memories, sounds, scents, and colours all formed part of the living thing that Frances Rhett had killed. "Leaving Charleston!" said Silas, speaking in a dazed sort of way. "Yes. I cannot stay here any longer." "Going--say--it's not because of what I did last night." "You--oh, no. It has nothing to do with you." She spoke almost disdainfully. "But where are you going?" "Back to Ireland." "When?" "To-day." Then, suddenly, in some curious manner, he knew. But he was clever enough, for once in his life, to restrain himself and say nothing. "I will go this afternoon," said she, as though she were talking of a journey of a few miles. "Have you any friends to go to?" Phyl thought of Mr. Hennessy sitting in his gloomy office in gloomy Dublin. "Yes, one." "In Ireland?" "Yes." "Can't you think of any other friends?" "No." "Not even me?" "I don't know," said poor Phyl, "I never could understand you quite, but now that I am in trouble you seem a friend--I'm miserable--but there's no use having friends here. It only makes it the worse having to go." "Do you remember the day I asked you to run off to Florida with me," said Silas, "and leave this damned place? It's no good for any one here and you've found it out--the place is all right, it's the people that are wrong." Phyl made no reply. "You're not going back," he finished. She glanced at him. "You're going to stay here--here with me." "I am going back to Ireland to-day," said Phyl. "You are not, you are going to stay here." "No. I am going back." She spoke as a person speaks who is half drowsy, and Silas spoke like a person whose mind is half absent. It was the strangest conversation to listen to, knowing their relationship and the point at issue. "You are going to stay here," he went on. "If I lost you now I'd never find you again. I've been wanting you ever since I saw you that day first in the yard-- D'you remember how we sat on the log together?--you can't tramp all the way back to Charleston-- Come with me and you'll be happy always, all the time and all your life--" "No," said Phyl, "I mustn't--I can't." Her mind, half dazed by all she had gone through, by the mesmerism of his voice, by the brilliant light of the day, was capable of no real decision on any point. The dark streets of Dublin lay before her, a vague and nightmare vision. To return to Vernons would be only her first step on the return to Ireland, and yet if she did not return to Vernons, where could she go?