Understanding message deletion model

[Jason Franklin]

Greetings:

My journey toward a better mutt configuration continues. :)

Today, I noticed that, under the defaults, this happens...

1. Hit 'd' on the selected message in the index.
2. Hit 'q'.
3. Mutt prompts something like: "Purge messages selected for deletion?"
4. Hit 'n'.
5. Mutt quits.

Now, if I re-open mutt, the message is gone... completely. I'm confused
as to why the message was removed even though I typed 'n' at the prompt
for whether or not to proceed with the purge.

Are "purging" and "deleting" not the same thing?

Where did this message go? I already checked my trash folder, and it's
not there. Unfortunately, I've been re-writing my configs, so the trash
folder is not named yet.

Many thanks in advance for your help!

-- 
Jason Franklin