CHAPTER IX
When Silas Grangerson left the cemetery of St. Michael’s he walked for half a mile without knowing or caring in what direction he was going.
Phyl had done more than slap his face. She had slapped his pride, his assurance of himself, and his desire for her all at the same time.
Silas rarely bothered about girls, yet he knew that he had the power to fascinate any woman once he put his mind to the work. He had not tried his powers of fascination on Phyl. It was the other way about. Phyl absolutely unconsciously had used her fascination upon him.
Something in her, recognised by him on their first meeting in the stable yard, had put away the barrier of sex. He had talked to her as if she had been a boy. Sitting on the seat beside her whilst the Colonel had been prosing over politics and tobacco, the prompting came to Silas to pinch her finger just for fun; when he had put his hands over her eyes that night it was in obedience to the same prompting, but at the moment of parting from her, a desire quite new had overmastered him.
He had kissed a good many girls, but never in his life had he kissed a girl as he kissed Phyl.
Something cynical in his feelings for the other sex had always left him somewhat cold, but Phyl was different from the others, she had in some way struck straight at his real being.
When he left her that night at Grangersons he was almost as disturbed as she.
He scarcely slept. He was out at dawn and on his return after she had left he sat down and wrote the letter which Phyl received next morning.