"What! Why, I heard you spoken of as a great leader, almost a prophet."
"All that is past!" he said in soul-agony. "I go to become a hermit."
"But your wife?"
"I shall never see her again."
There was a tense silence. Phyllis, avoiding his look, toyed nervously with a leaf. At last, stiffening up his neck with as much firmness as he could muster, Eustace said:
"Good-bye."
She raised her lovely profile and was about to quack, when he burst out, croaking with emotion:
"Ah, Phyllis, Phyllis! I have said a last farewell to nest, wife, career,—but I cannot say it to you! You hold me as with a magic spell. Love—tempestuous, convention-defying—has swept me off my webs."
"I, too, have...."
She buried her head, in confusion, under her wing.