"Phyl!"
The man's look was one of dreadful pain. He felt as if every ideal and honest feeling he had ever had, had fallen upon him, crushing him beneath its burden. Phyl's ridicule was worse, far worse than any suffering he had endured, however unjust.
"You can't—you don't mean that," he cried hoarsely. "No, no, Phyl, you don't mean it. You——"
"But I do—I do," the girl cried, with sudden passion. "Oh, I know you've suffered. God only knows just how you've suffered! And since I've heard all you've gone through, I've suffered every moment of it with you. Yes, I know I've hurt you now, and I meant to hurt you—not because you hurt me, not because of all you wrote me in your letter, but because I want to tell you all I feel about—about this new life you figure to mix up with. Frank, your own honest notions are just too big for words. They're like you—all of them. But how—how are you going to carry them out? Say, I'll tell you. Maybe I'm just seeing things as they happen, and not as folks guess they're going to figger out. You're going to help fix things right by tying yourself to the ranks of labor, so as to fight capital. That's how you're going to bring about brotherly and sisterly love in the world! By fighting! Say, you said you were going to enlist in the army. You have. And it's a fighting army, facing all the horrors of a war far more dreadful than the life-and-death struggle of nations. Do you need me to tell you of the wretched, self-seeking leaders of the working men? The men who lead them like a flock of silly sheep so they may personally prosper and feed on them? Do you need me to tell you, what every paper in the world tells you, of the awful sufferings the helpless women and kiddies go through? All just because these grabbing leaders, yearning for publicity and power, order their men-folk to stop work, and resort to violence for a few odd cents more pay, or because some wretched scallawag, who richly deserves it, no doubt, has fallen under the rules of his employers. That's not your Socialism, if I know you. Oh, this horrible, horrible bitterness and hatred going on everywhere about us. Why should it be? You ask that, too, and you get right up against one little fact of life—the power of money—and guess that's the root of it. It isn't! It isn't! I tell you there's just one cause. It's selfishness. It's the selfishness of one class just as sure as it's the selfishness of another. And they bring all sorts of arguments about principle to prop themselves up on. There's no principle about it. It's just self, self, self, all the time. Everybody wants something they don't honestly earn. And when they can't get it, if they think they're strong enough, they just start right out to fight for it, like a lot of savages, while those who look to them for support and comfort are left to starve, and put up with all the horrors caused by savage passions, inflamed to frenzy by those leaders who are the only creatures to obtain worldly advantage and benefit from their disgraceful doings. Oh, Frank, it's just awful to think that you have become one of these—these—villains."
The girl's passionate denunciation came to an end just as she halted at the foot of the great flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the Eldorado Hotel. But she waited for no comment from her silent companion. She just glanced up and pointed at the building. Then, with an almost kaleidoscopic return to her lightest, smiling manner, she announced their arrival at their destination.
"Say, Frank," she cried, with an air of absurd importance. "This is my hotel. We've a suite of elegant apartments right on the first floor. And, dear," with a sudden tenderness, "Mrs. Hendrie—Monica—your Mon, who loves you nearly as much as I do, is just waiting right there—for you. You'll come along in?"
Frank looked up into the tenderly pleading eyes, and his last objection melted before them.
He nodded.