When a woman falls in love with a man or a man with a woman, the first necessity of his or her being is to stand well in the eyes of the loved one, anything that may bring ridicule or adverse criticism or disdain is death.
Phyl was not in love with Richard Pinckney, nor had she been in love with him at Kilgobbin, all the same the sensitiveness to appearances felt by a lover was there. Her anger that night when he had let her in at eleven o'clock was due, perhaps, less to his implied reproof then the fact that she had felt cheap in his eyes, and now, sitting at dinner with Miss Pinckney the idea that he was still angry with her was obscured by the far more distasteful idea that she was of absolutely no account in his eyes, a creature to whom he had to be civil, an interloper.
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened at the thought, but Miss Pinckney did not notice it. She had turned from the subject of the Rhetts and their automobiles to Charleston society in general.
"Now that you've come," said she, "you will find there's not a moment you won't enjoy yourself if you're fond of gadding about. All the society here is in the hands of young people, balls and parties! The St. Cecilias give three balls a year. I go always, not to dance but to look on. Richard is a St. Cecilia--St. Cecilias? Why, it's just a club a hundred-and-forty years old. There are two hundred of them, all men, and they know how to entertain. I have been at every ball for the last half century. Not one have I missed. Then there's the yacht club and picnics to Summerville and the Isle of Palms, and bathing parties and boating by moonlight. If you are a gad-about you will enjoy all that."
"But I'm not," said Phyl. "I've never been used to society, much. I like books better than people, unless they're--"
"Well," said Miss Pinckney, "one wouldn't expect you to like people you _didn't_ like--there's no 'really' in liking, it's one thing or the other--you don't care for girls, maybe?"
"I haven't seen much of them," replied Phyl, "except at school, and that was only for a short time. I--I ran away."
"I was miserable; they were kind enough to me, but I wanted to get home--Father was alive then--I felt I had to get home or die--I can't explain it--It felt like a sort of madness. I had to get back home."