"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.