"I have had my last letter," she said. "My last letters came to me when
Grif laid that package upon the table. He has done with me."

"Done with you?" cried Aimee, frightened by her manner. "With _you_,
Dolly?"

Then for the first time Dolly flushed scarlet to the very roots of her
hair.

"Yes," she said, "he has done with me. If there had been half a chance
that he would ever come near me again, the letter I wrote to him that
night would have brought him. A word of it would have brought him,--the
first word. But he is having his revenge by treating it with contempt.
He is showing me that it is too late, and that no humility on my part
can touch him. I scarcely could have thought that of him," dropping into
a chair by the toilet-table and hiding her face in her hands.

"It is not like Grif to let me humble myself for nothing. And I did
humble myself,--ah, how I did humble myself! That letter,--if you could
have seen it, Aimee,--it was all on fire with love for him. I laid
myself under his feet,--and he has trodden me down! Grif--Grif, it was
n't like you,--it was n't worthy of you,--it was n't indeed!"

Her worst enemy would have felt herself avenged if she had heard the
anguish in her voice. She was crushed to the earth under this last great
blow of feeling that he had altered so far. Grif,--her whilom greatest
help and comfort,--the best gift God had given her! Dear, old, tender,
patient fellow! as she had been wont to call him in her fits of
penitence.

Grif, whose arms had always been open to her at her best and at her
worst, who had loved her and borne with her, and waited upon her and
done her bidding since they were both little more than children. When
had Grif ever turned from her before? Never. When 'had Grif ever been
cold or unfaithful in word or deed? Never. When had he ever failed her?
Never--never--never--until now! And now that he had failed her at last,
she felt that the bitter end had come. The end to everything,--to all
the old hopes and dreams, to all the old sweet lovers' quarrels and
meetings and partings, to all their clinging together, to all the
volumes and volumes of love and trust that lay in the past, to all the
world of simple bliss that lay still unrevealed in their lost future, to
all the blessed old days when they had pictured to each other what that
future was to be. It had all gone for nothing in the end. It must all
have gone for nothing, when Grif--a new Grif--not her own true,