Twenty minutes later he had his opportunity. He was crossing the hall from the supper room, when he came face to face with Silas. They were alone.
"Excuse me," said Richard Pinckney, halting in front of the other, "I want a word with you."
"Certainly," answered Silas, guessing at once what was coming.
"You made some remarks about me to Miss Rhett this evening," went on the other. "You coupled my name with the name of a lady in a most unjustifiable manner and I want your explanation here and now."
"Who was the lady?" asked Silas, seemingly quite unmoved.
"In what way did I couple your name with her, may I ask?"
"No, you mayn't." Richard had turned pale before the calm insolence of the other. "You know quite well what you said and if you are a gentleman you will apologise-- If you aren't you won't and I will deal with you in Charleston accordingly."
Phyl was at that moment coming out of the supper room with young Reggie Calhoun--the same who, according to Richard that morning at breakfast long ago, was an admirer of Maria Pinckney.
She saw the two men, in profile, facing one another, and she saw Silas's right hand, which he was holding behind his back, opening and shutting convulsively.
She saw the blow given by Pinckney, she saw Silas step back and the knife which he always carried, as the wasp carries its sting, suddenly in his hand.
Face to face with madness for a moment, holding it, fighting eye to eye.
Had she faltered, had her gaze left his for the hundredth part of a second, he would have cast her aside and fallen upon his prey.
It was her soul that held him, her spirit--call it what you will, the something that speaks alone through the eye.
Calhoun and Pinckney stood, during that tremendous moment, stricken, breathless, without making the slightest movement. They saw she was holding him by the power of her eye alone; so vividly did this fact strike them that for a dazed moment it seemed to them that the battle was not theirs, that the contest was beyond the earthly plane, that this was no struggle between human beings, but a battle between sanity and madness.
Its duration might have been spanned by three ticks of the great old clock that stood in the corner of the hall telling the time.