not--asked you to release me, Phillida."

"You have said that we can not go on in this way. I say the same. It--"
she could not speak for a quarter of a minute; then she slowly finished
her sentence with an effort of desperation and without raising her eyes
to his--"it is better that it is over."

"Is it over?" he asked, stunned. "Think what you say."

"We have agreed that we can not go on," she answered. "You must take
these. I can not keep them."

"Don't make me take them. Why not keep them?"

"I will send them to-morrow. I can not retain them."

Millard could not take them. He would have felt much as he might in
rifling a grave of its treasures had he lifted those tokens from the
table. But he saw, or thought he saw, that remonstrances might make
Phillida more unhappy, but that it would be perfectly useless. It was
better to accept his fate, and forbear. He tried to say something to
soften the harshness of parting, but his powers of thought and speech
deserted him, and he knew that whatever he would say must be put into
one or two words. He looked up, hesitatingly stretched out his hand, and
asked huskily:

"Part friends?"

Phillida, pale and speechless, took his hand a moment, and then he went
out. She leaned her head against the window-jamb, lifted the shade, and
watched his form retreating through the drizzly night until he
disappeared from view, and then she turned out the lights. But instead
of returning to her mother and Agatha in the basement, she threw herself
on the floor, resting her arms on the sofa while she sobbed in utter
wretchedness. All her courage was spent; all her faith had fled;
helpless, wounded, wretched as a soul in bottomless perdition, she could
see neither life nor hope in any future before her. She had believed
herself able to go on alone and to bear any sacrifice. But in losing him
she had lost even the power to pray.

About an hour after Millard's departure, Mrs. Callender came up the
stairs and called gently:

"Phillida!"

Then she entered the parlor. The shutters were not closed, and the room
was faintly lighted by rays that came through the shades from the lamp
on the other side of the street.

"I'm here, mother," said Phillida, rising and coming toward her. Then,
embracing her mother, she said, "And I'm so unhappy, mother, so utterly
wretched."

Such an appeal for sympathy on the part of the daughter was an
occurrence almost unknown. She had been the self-reliant he