e upon her a stirring
of the soul, a joyous uplifting as though wings had been given to her mind
for one wild second raising it to the heights beyond earthly knowledge.

"Love can never die."

It was as though some ghostly voice had whispered this fact in her ear.

Juliet was not dead nor the man she loved, changed maybe but not dead. In
some extraordinary way she knew it as surely as though she herself had
once been Juliet.

Religion to Phyl had meant little, the Bible a book of fair promises and
appalling threats, vague promises but quite definite threats. As a quite
small child she had gathered the impression that she was sure to be damned
unless she managed to convert herself into a quite different being from
the person she knew herself to be. Death was the supreme bogey, the future
life a thing not to be thought of if one wanted to be happy.

Yet now, just as if she had been through it all, the truth came flooding
on her like a golden sea, the truth that life never loses touch with life,
that the body is only a momentary manifestation of the ever living
spirit.

Meeting Street, the old house so full of memories, Juliet's letters, the
garden, they had all been stretching out arms to her, trying to tell her
something, whispering, suggesting, and now all these vague voices had
become clear, as though strengthened by the moonlight and the mystery of
night.

Clear as lip-spoken words came the message:

"You have lived before and we say this to you, we, the things that knew
you and loved you in a past life."

A step that halted outside close to the garden gate broke the spell, the
gate turned on its hinges shewing through its trellis work the form of a
man. It was Pinckney just returned from some supper-party or club.

Phyl caught her breath back. Suddenly, and at the sight of Pinckney,
Prue's words of that morning entered her mind.

"Miss Julie, Massa Pinckney told me tell yo' he be at de gate t'night
same's las' night. Done you let on as I told you."

And here he was, the man who had been occupying her thoughts and who was
beginning to occupy her dreams, and here she was as though waiting for him
by appointment.

But there was much more than that. Worlds and worlds more than that, a
whole universe of happiness undreamed of.

She rose from the seat and the parted bushes rustled faintly as they
closed behind her.

Pinckney, who had just shut the gate, heard the whisper of the leaves, he
turned and saw