And he began to believe what he was saying. The more he realized that she was dropping out of his life altogether, the more he coveted her love. In the rashness of the moment, in the heat of his anger at being opposed in his purpose, he might even have gone to the length of marrying her on the spot, if the conditions had been propitious.
"No, I can give you no more 'time,' Phil, for the matter is irrevocably settled, as far as I am concerned," Mollie responded kindly, but firmly, "and I should only be doing you a great wrong if I should encourage you to believe otherwise. Now, please let us dismiss the subject, once for all, and agree to be only the best of friends in the future."
"Mollie, I won't!" Philip exclaimed with mingled anger and wounded pride. "There must be some reason for this unaccountable change in you—more than appears on the surface. Perhaps you have met some one else whom you have learned to love—tell me, is it so?"
Two scarlet spots leaped into Mollie's cheeks at this excited and imperative demand. They were called there by a shock of mingled indignation and conscious guilt. She felt that, even though Phil had been a lifelong friend, he had no right to try to extort the secrets of her heart in any such high-handed manner.
Yet, at the same instant, when he had accused her of loving another, Clifford Faxon's face, with its expression of high resolve and noble purposes, its clear, honest eyes, its frank and genial smile, arose before her, causing a sudden, conscious heart-thrill, which also brought with it a sense of dismay.
Could it be possible, came the simultaneous thought, that she had bestowed her affections upon a man whom she did not know—with whom she had never exchanged half a dozen sentences—who had flashed like a meteor, once or twice, across her path and was gone, perhaps never to appear again?
Ah! but it was true, nevertheless. Soul meets soul in the flash of an eye, through the tones of the voice, and the touch of a hand, and, like a revelation, there came to her the consciousness of the fact that when she had stood before Clifford Faxon, more than six years previous, she had recognized in him—even though he had spoken no word in response to her impulsive outburst of gratitude—a nature the counterpart and, therefore, the companion of her own, and with this unveiling of the holy of holies within her soul came the realization that no other would satisfy the cravings of her heart.
At the same time, she was under no obligation to make Philip Wentworth her father confessor, and she resented his imperative demand that she do so. She drew herself up with quiet dignity as she coldly replied:
"Excuse me, Phil, but I think you are overstepping the bounds of both courtesy and friendship in asking me such questions."
Philip sprang to his feet, his face a sheet of flame.