I am disinterested. I
tell you now that I am utterly in love with you. Without you I don't
care for life. I have not had heart for any pursuit since that evening
on which we parted on account of my folly. But if you tell me that you
have ceased to care for me, there is nothing for me but to go and make
the best of things."

Phillida was no longer heroic. Her sufferings, her mistakes, her
physical weakness, and the yearning of her heart for Millard's affection
were fast getting the better of all the reasons she had believed so
conclusive against the restoration of their engagement. Nevertheless,
she found strength to say: "I am quite unfit to be your wife. You are a
man that everybody likes and you enjoy society, as you have a right to."
Then after a pause and an evident struggle to control herself she
proceeded: "Do you think I would weight you down with a wife that will
always be remembered for the follies of her youth?"

Phillida did not see how Charley could answer this, but she was so
profoundly touched by his presence that she hoped he might be able to
put matters in a different light. When she had finished speaking he
contracted his brows into a frown for a moment. Then he leaned forward
with his left hand open on one knee and his right hand clinched and
resting on the other.

"I know I gave you reason to think I was cowardly," he said; "but I hope
I am a braver man than you imagine. Now if anybody should ever condemn
you for a little chaff in a great granary of wheat it would give me pain
only if it gave you pain. Otherwise it would give me real pleasure,
because I would like to bear it in such a way that you'd say to
yourself, 'Charley is a braver man than I ever thought him.'" Millard
had risen and was standing before her as he finished speaking. There was
a pause during which Phillida looked down at her own hands lying in her
lap.

"Now, Phillida," he said, "I want to ask one thing--"

"Don't ask me anything just now, Charley," she said in a broken voice
full of entreaty, at the same time raising her eyes to his. Then she
reached her two hands up toward him and he came and knelt at her side
while she put her arms about his neck and drew him to her, and
whispered, "I never understood you before, Charley. I never understood
you."

XLI.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

The next morning Agatha went over to Washington Square to let Philip
know that the trip southward had been postponed for a week or so. And
Ph