Outside in the sunlight Silas hesitated for a moment as though he was about to turn back, then he went on, striking along the grass road and between the trees.
Although he had never been over the ground before, he guessed it to be a part of the old Beauregard plantation and the distance from Grangerville to be not more than eight miles as the crow flies. By the road, reckoning from where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie of the place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. His mind was going through a process difficult to describe.
Silas had never cared for anything, not even for himself. Danger or safety did not enter into his calculations. Religion was for him the name of a thing he did not understand. He had no finer feelings except in relationship to things strong, swift and brilliant, he had no tenderness for the weakness of others, even the weakness of women.
He had seized on Phyl as a Burgomaster gull might seize on a puffin chick, he had picked her up on the road to carry her off regardless of everything but his own desire for her—a desire so strong that he would have dashed her and himself to pieces rather than that another should possess her.
Well, as he watched her seated on the straw in that ruined cabin, subdued, without energy, and entirely at his mercy, a will that was not his will rose in opposition to him. Some part of himself that had remained in utter darkness till now woke to life. It was perhaps the something that despite all his strange qualities made him likeable, the something that instinct guessed to be there.
It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious of no struggle with it because it took the form of helplessness.
Nothing but force could make her give him what he wanted. The thing was impossible, beyond him. He felt that he could do everything, fight everything, subdue everything—but the subdued.
There was something else. Weakness had always repelled him, whether it was the weakness of the knees of a horse or the weakness of the will of a man. Phyl’s weakness did not repel him but it took the edge from his passion. It was almost a form of ugliness.
He had determined on finding help to send some one back for Phyl; any of the coloured folk hereabouts would be able to pilot her to Grangersons. He was not troubling about the broken phaëton or the horses; the horses had plenty of food and water; so far from suffering they would have the time of their lives. They might be stolen—he did not care, and nothing was more indicative of his mental upset than this indifference toward the things he treasured most.