Phyllis's dark eyes were hard as she flung in her denial.
"But I do blame him," she cried. "Even if Frank had been guilty it was a wicked, cruel thing to do. I can't help it if it hurts you, Mrs. Hendrie. I do certainly blame your husband."
Monica shook her head.
"He was in a fury of jealousy, and no man is quite sane under such circumstances." Phyllis's challenge had given Monica the firmness of decision, which, in her grief, she had utterly lacked. "I am to blame. I can see it all now. Had I never lied to Frank in my ridiculous sense of duty to my dead sister, and my selfish desire to marry my husband; had I never told the boy that I was his mother—this would never have happened. In his great goodness and chivalry, the poor boy sacrificed himself for what he believed was my honor. It—is—too terrible. Just God, what a punishment for my lies. Never, never, never, as long as I live, can I forgive myself. And now? Oh, what can I do? Whatever can we do?"
Monica's tears flowed fast, and in sympathy for the suffering woman Phyllis wept, too. Her anger, her resentment against those who had injured her love were powerless to resist the appeal of this woman's grief. However she loved Frank, she remembered that Monica loved him, too. All his life she had struggled and slaved for him.
But she was there for a greater purpose than to help another woman in her suffering. She was there to help the man she loved. More than that, she was there to win him back to herself, to that happiness she believed she alone could give him. She knew him so well. She felt in her simple way that he needed her, in spite of his long, long letter giving her back her promise, and full of his unalterable resolve to put his past and all that belonged to it, behind him forever. She intended to pit herself against his desperate purpose. She was determined to restore the old Frank she knew, the old Frank she loved better than her life.
"What can you do?" she cried, a glowing light of strength and love shining in her beautiful, half-tearful eyes. "What can we do? Why, everything. But we're not going to do it by writing letters, mam. You love him? You? And you can just sit at home right here, and hand him words written on paper, and push money into the envelope, money which means nothing to either of you, when he comes out of the prison you helped to send him to? Oh, mam, mam, how could you? Your place was at the gates of Alston prison as it was mine, if I had known, like you did. It was for us to have been along there, ready to reach out, and—and help him. What can we do? What can I do? I'll tell you. Oh, I know it's not for me to tell you things. Maybe I'm young and foolish. Maybe I don't know much. I'm just not going to write my Frank in answer to his—his nonsensical stuff. But I won't take back my promise to be his wife. I'm—I'm going to marry him—because I know he wants me, and I want him. Oh, no, I'm not going to marry a man who gets worrying to make strikes and things, and calls it helping labor. I'm not going to marry a man who's always making trouble in the world, who leaves kiddies starving for what he calls a 'principle,' and most folks generally—miserable. But I'm going to marry my Frank, and I'm going right on to Toronto to find him—if I have to walk there."
The girl finished up breathlessly. All her love and courage were shining in her eyes. Monica had been held spellbound by the force and determination underlying every unconsidered word Phyllis uttered, and now she sprang from her seat, caught in the rush of the other's enthusiasm.
"Oh Phyl, Phyl," she cried, catching the girl by the shoulders, and looking down into her ardent face. "You brave, brave child. I never thought. I could never have thought, fool that I am. Yes, yes, we will go to him. Not you alone. I will go, too. You are the bravest, wisest child in the world, and—I love you for it."