I were deceiving him and everybody. I am, and I don’t care—I don’t care if they knew. O my darling! My darling! My darling! If the whole world were against you I would love you all the more. I will love you all my life and I will love you when I am dead.” 148 148 Phyl’s eyes grew half blind with tears. This cry from the Past went to her heart like a knife. The wind, strengthening for a moment, moved the window curtains, bringing with it the drowsy afternoon sounds of Charleston, sounds that seemed to mock at this voice declaring the deathlessness of its love. It was impossible to go on reading. Impossible to expose any more this heart that had ceased to beat. The meetings in the arbour behind the magnolia tree, the kisses, the words that the leaves and birds alone could hear—they had all ended in death. It did not matter now if the garden gate creaked on its hinges, or if watching eyes from the piazza saw the glossy leaves stirring when no wind could shake them—nothing mattered at all to these people now. She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully closing them in the secret drawer. 149 CHAPTER VII “Miss Pinckney,” said Phyl that night as they sat at supper, “when you left me this afternoon in Juliet’s room I stopped to look at the books and things and when I opened the bureau I touched a spring by accident and a little panel fell out and I found a lot of old letters behind it. It was wrong of me to go meddling about and I thought I ought to tell you.” “Old letters,” said Miss Pinckney, “you don’t say—what were they about?” “I read one or two,” said the girl. “I’d never, never have dreamed of touching them only—only they were hers—they were to him.” “Rupert?” “Yes.” “Love letters?” “Yes.”
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