"You—you just look wonderful, Phyl," he cried, for a moment all else smothered in the background.
"True? Sure?"
"True? Say, you just couldn't look more lovely," the boy cried.
Phyllis laughed.
"Then come right along. See, we're bumping folks, standing here. I'm going to take you to where your—where Mrs. Hendrie is waiting for you. The——"
But the mention of Monica left Frank once more alive to realities.
"No, no, Phyl," he cried. "It is useless. Don't you understand? I love my—I love Mon as dearly as ever son loved a mother, but—the barrier has been set up between us, and can never be removed. Oh, believe me, it is no resentment, or bitterness against her. She just belongs to a different world from mine—now. It would give her pain. I know what she would say—and I know what I must say."
In spite of all his protests, Frank was walking beside Phyllis, moving unquestioningly in the direction she selected.
The girl looked round laughingly. Phyllis had never perhaps smiled so joyously, so sweetly as she was smiling now. But every look, every word she spoke, was full of definite purpose.
"I haven't recovered from the shock you handed me—in that—that letter," she said, without a shadow of distress in her smiling eyes. "I haven't, true as true. Say, I just kind of wonder if you've got half a notion how it feels for a girl to be thrown over by letter? Say, I just won't be thrown over by—by letter. That's why I've come here to Toronto. I've come right here so you can tell me with your own two very determined lips, I'm not wanted. When you've told me that I'm not wanted, that you just don't love me any more, then I'm going right away to Gleber, and get on with my plowing. I'll just pack up all the elegant suits Mrs. Hendrie's bought me, and never see them again. Then I'll fix myself up in black and bugles—whatever they are—and be a widow woman for the rest of my life. Now, truth! You don't love me—any more; and you don't want me?"