h the odylic
emanations of the universe?"

Phillida smiled a little and Agatha insisted on helping her to creep
into the parlor. She said she could not pack the trunk with Philly
looking on. But when she got her sister into the parlor she did not seem
to care to go back to the trunks.

The door-bell rang at three and Agatha met Charley in the hall.

"She doesn't know a word of your coming," said Agatha in a low voice. "I
will go and tell her, to break the shock, and then bring you right in."

She left Millard standing by the hat table while she went in.

"Phillida, who do you think has come to see you? It's Charley Millard. I
took the liberty of telling him you'd see him for a short time."

Then she added in a whisper: "Poor fellow, he seems to feel so bad."

Saying this she set a chair for him, and without giving Phillida time to
recover from a confused rush of thought and feeling she returned to the
hall saying, "Come right in, Charley."

To take off the edge, as she afterward expressed it, she sat for three
minutes with them, talking chaff with Millard, and when she had set the
conversation going about indifferent things, she remembered something
that had to be done in the kitchen, and was instantly gone down-stairs.

The conversation ran by its own momentum for a while after Agatha's
departure, and then it flagged.

"You're going away," said Millard after a pause.

"Yes."

"I know it is rude for me to call without permission, but I couldn't
bear that you should leave until I had asked your forgiveness for things
that I can never forgive myself for."

Phillida looked down a moment in agitation and then said, "I have
nothing to forgive. The fault was all on my side. I have been very
foolish."

"I wouldn't quarrel with you for the world," said Millard, "but the
fault was mine. What is an error of judgment in a person of your noble
unselfishness! Fool that I was, not to be glad to bear a little reproach
for such a person as you are!"

To Phillida the world suddenly changed color while Charley was uttering
these words. His affection was better manifested by what he had just
said than if he had formally declared it. But the fixed notion that he
was moved only by pity could not be vanquished in an instant.

"Charley," she said, "it is very good of you to speak such kind words to
me. I am very weak, and you are very good-hearted to wish to comfort
me."

"You are quite mistaken, Phillida. You fancy that