The colored driver was perched upon his high seat in front of the DeKay landau and the team of chestnut mares was ready for the road. There was plenty of time left in which to reach Montgomery so as to take the north bound train. "Agnes," Reynolds murmured, "you must be ready to set an early day for our marriage by the time of my return. We shall want to sail as early in June as possible. I have not yet spoken to your uncle and aunt, but I shall as soon as I return." She was silent, but it was a silence just as satisfactory to her lover as any words could have been. The barbaric imagination, always a part of the negro, must have been aroused in the driver as he lounged in his seat and gazed at the beautiful woman and the tall, strong man straying down the walk. Their figures were boldly relieved against the dull gray background of the old house, and framed in with vines and magnolia boughs. He had a vivid though savagely crude sense of the warmth and tenderness and freshness of the picture. His indolent, half-closed eyes and shining, jet black face were expressive of that dreamy phase of delight which is generated by mere passive receptivity. The delicate blue of Mrs. Ransom's dress, the charming bloom of her face and the supple grace and strength of her slender figure were to him as a star is to a poet, a mystery, a focus of unapproachable glory, never to be any nearer or any further away. He felt, without knowing it, all the æsthetic values of the scene before him; the cloudless, tender sky, the rich green of the magnolias, the wind-beaten and rain-stained old mansion all wrapped in semi-tropical vines, the flare of the sunlight and the soft glooms of the shade, and, beyond the house and the trees, the sheeny reeds and the broad, winding river, all these with the fresh perfumes and delicious spring wind, touched him and "Passed like a glorious roll of drums Through the triumph of his dream." He saw, he felt, he enjoyed--what more could his lazy, basking nature crave? The parting was commonplace enough, a mere clasping of hands, strong, hopeful smiles and good-by. It could not be less, it might outwardly have been more, if the driver had not been there. "You will come soon." "Very soon--in a few days." The carriage, a sort of open landau, began to move, and Reynolds sitting in the rear turned and furtively flung back a kiss. She was already beginning to grow pale, but she touched her lips with her fingers and waved him adieu with a bright smile. He kept his eyes upon her, as the distance gradually grew, and, so absorbed was he, it startled him when the vehicle suddenly came to a stand-still. "Wha' do Gin'l DeKay lib?" called out the driver of a carriage whose way lay opposite to theirs. "Jis back ya' leetle ways," answered Reynolds' driver. "All right, I fought so; much 'bleeged."