Phyl tried the garden gate, it was locked and Seth appearing at that moment on the lower piazza, she called to him to fetch the key. He let her out and she stood for a moment undecided as to whether she would walk towards the Battery or in the opposite direction. Meeting Street never looked more charming than now in the very early morning sunlight; under the haze-blue sky, almost deserted, it seemed for a moment to have recaptured its youth. A negro crab vendor was wheeling his barrow along, crying his wares. His voice came lazily on the warm scented air.
She turned in the direction of the station. The voice of the crab seller had completed in some uncanny way the charm of the deserted street and the early sunlight. She was going to lose all this. Vernons and the city she loved, Juliet, Miss Pinckney, the past and the present, she was going to lose them all, they were all in some miraculous way part of the man she loved, her love of them was part of her love for him. She could no longer stay in Charleston; she must go--where? She could think of nowhere to go but Ireland.
To stay here would be absolutely impossible.
As she walked without noticing whither she was going her mind cleared, she began to form plans.
She would go that very day. Nothing would stop her. The thing had to be done. Let it be done at once. She would explain everything to Miss Pinckney. She would escape without seeing Richard again. What she was proposing to herself was death, the ruin of everything she cared for, the destruction of all the ties that bound her to the world, the present and the past. It was the recognition that these ties had been broken for her and all these things taken away by the woman who had taken away Richard.
Presently she found herself in the suburbs, in a street where coloured children were playing in the gutter, and where the houses were unsubstantial looking as rabbit-hutches, but there was a glimpse of country beyond and she did not turn back. She did not want breakfast. If she returned to Vernons by ten o'clock it would give her plenty of time to pack her things, say good-bye to Miss Pinckney and take her departure before Richard returned to luncheon--if he did return.