CHAPTER VIII
When Phyl awoke from sleep next morning, the brightness of the South had lost some of its charm.
Something magical that had been forming in her mind and taking its life from Vernons had been shattered last night by Pinckney’s commonplace question.
This morning, looking back on yesterday, she could remember details but she could not recapture the essence. The exaltation that had raised her above and beyond herself. It was like the remembrance of a rose contrasted with the reality.
The whole day had been working up to that moment in the little arbour, when her mind, tricked or led, had risen to heights beyond thought, to happiness beyond experience, only to be cast down from those heights by the voice of reality.
The thing was plain enough to common sense; she had let herself be over-ruled by Imagination, working upon splendid material. Prue’s message, her own likeness to Juliet, Juliet’s letters, the little arbour, those and the magic of Vernons had worked upon her mind singly and together, exalting her into a soul-state utterly beyond all previous experience.
It was as though she had played the part of Juliet for a day, suffered vaguely and enjoyed in imagination what Juliet had suffered and enjoyed in life, known Love as Juliet had known it—for a moment.
The brutal touch of the Real coming at the supreme moment to shatter and shrivel everything.