After a moment’s silence he began again.
There was something in Silas’s mentality that seemed to have come up from the world of automata, something tireless and persistent akin to the energy that drives a beetle over all obstacles in its course, on or round them.
“That’s all very well,” said he, “but you can’t always go on caring for Pinckney.”
“Can’t I?” said Phyl.
“No, you can’t. He’s going to get married and then where will you be?”
Phyl, staring over the horses’ heads as though she were staring at some black prospect, set her teeth. Then she spoke and her voice was like the voice of a person who speaks under mesmerism.
“I cared for him before he was born and I’ll care for him after I’m dead and there’s no use in bothering a bit about it now. You couldn’t understand. No one can understand, not even he.”
The road here bordered a stretch of waste land; Silas gazed over it, his face was drawn and hard.
Then he suddenly blazed out.
Laying the whip over the horses and turning them so sharply that the phaëton was all but upset he put them over the waste land; another touch of the whip and they bolted.