leaves of the tree a few drops of water fell on the brick pavement,
where several joyous sparrows were drinking, and farther off, as bright
as silver in the clear wind, a solitary church spire rose above the
huddled roofs of the town. When the wind lulled, as it did now and then,
a warm breath seemed to stir in the sunshine, which grew suddenly
brighter, while a promise of spring floated like a faint provocative
scent on the air. And this scent, so vague, so roving, that it was like
the ghostly perfume of flowers, stole at last into the memory, and made
the old dream of youth and the young grow restless at the call of Life,
which sang to the music of flutes in the brain. But the wind, rising
afresh, drove the spirit of spring from the street, and swept the broken
leaves of the magnolia tree over the drenched grass to the green-painted
iron urns on either side of the steps.

The house, a small brick dwelling, set midway of an expressionless row
and wearing on its front a look of desiccated gentility, stood in one
of those forgotten streets where needy gentlewomen do "light
housekeeping" in an obscure hinterland of respectability. Hill Street,
which had once known fashion, and that only yesterday, as old ladies
count, had sunk at last into a humble state of decay. Here and there the
edges of porches had crumbled; grass was beginning to sprout by the
curbstone; and the once comfortable homes had opened their doors to
boarders or let their large, high-ceiled rooms to the impoverished
relicts of Confederate soldiers. Only a few blocks away the stream of
modern progress, sweeping along Broad Street, was rapidly changing the
old Southern city into one of those bustling centres of activity which
the press of the community agreed to describe as "a metropolis"; but
this river of industrialism was spanned by no social bridge connecting
Hill Street and its wistful relicts with the statelier dignities and the
more ephemeral gaieties of the opposite side. To be really "in society"