I have followed you," he says, slowly.

He does not offer to shake hands with her; he gives her no greeting; he
only stands before her, suffering his eyes to drink in hungrily her
saddened but always perfect beauty.

"So I see," she answers, quite slowly.

"You have been in trouble. You have grown thin," he says, presently, in
the same tone.

"Yes."

She is puzzled, dismayed, at his presence here, feeling an
unaccountable repugnance to his society, and a longing for his
departure, as she notes his unwonted agitation,--the unknown but
evident purpose in his eyes.

"When last we met," says Philip, with a visible effort at calmness, and
with his great dark, moody eyes bent upon the ground, "you told me
you--hated me."

"Did I? The last time? How long ago it seems!--years--centuries.
Ah!"--clasping her hands in a very ecstasy of regret--"how happy I was
then! and yet--I thought myself miserable! That day I spoke to you"
(gazing at him as one gazes at something outside and beyond the
question altogether), "I absolutely believed I knew what unhappiness
meant; and now----"

"Yes. You said you hated me," says the young man, still bent upon his
own wrongs to the exclusion of all others. He is sorry for her, very
sorry; but what is her honest grief for her beloved dead compared with
the desperate craving for the unattainable that is consuming him
daily,--hourly?

"I hardly remember," Molly says, running her slender fingers across her
brow. "Well,"--with a sigh,--"I have fallen into such low estate since
then that I think I have no power within me now to hate any one."

"You did not mean it, perhaps?" still painfully calm, although he knows
the moments of grace are slipping surely, swiftly, trying vainly to
encourage hope. "You said it, perhaps, in an instant of passion? One
often does. One exaggerates a small offense. Is it not so?"

"Yes,"--with her thoughts as far from him as the earth is from the
heavens,--"it may be so."

"You think so? You did _not_ mean it?" with a sudden gleam of
misplaced confidence. "Oh! if you only knew how I have suffered since
that fatal word passed your lips!--but you did not mean it. In
time--who knows?--you may even bring yourself to care for me a little.
Molly,"--seizing her hand,--"speak--speak, and say it will be so."

"No, no," exclaims she, at last, coming back to the present, and
understanding him. "Never. Why do you so deceive yourself? Do not think
it; do not try to belie