She hesitated just as she had hesitated that morning long ago when she had run away from school. She had run away, not so much to get home as to get away from homesickness.
Still she hesitated, urged by the recklessness that prompted her to break everything at one blow, urged by the dismal and hopeless prospect towards which the road to Charleston led her mind, held back by all sorts of hands that seemed reaching to her from the past.
Confused, bewildered, tempted yet resisting, all might have been well had not a vision suddenly risen before her clear, definite, and destructive to her reason.
The vision of Frances Rhett.
Everything bad and wild in Phyl surged up before that vision. For a second it seemed to her that she loathed the man she loved.
She put her foot on the step and got into the phaëton. Silas, without a word, jumped up beside her, and the horses started.
CHAPTER III
She had committed the irrevocable.