"Do you still love him?"
"No; no, no!"
"Then why should this be so?"
"I cannot tell, dear. It is so. If you take a young tree and split it, it still lives, perhaps. But it isn't a tree. It is only a fragment."
"Then be my fragment."
"So I will, if it can serve you to give standing ground to such a fragment in some corner of your garden. But I will not have myself planted out in the middle, for people to look at. What there is left would die soon." He still held her hands, and she did not attempt to draw them away. "John," she said, "next to mamma, I love you better than all the world. Indeed I do. I can't be your wife, but you need never be afraid that I shall be more to another than I am to you."
"That will not serve me," he said, grasping both her hands till he almost hurt them, but not knowing that he did so. "That is no good."
"It is all the good that I can do you. Indeed I can do you,—can do no one any good. The trees that the storms have splintered are never of use."
"And is this to be the end of all, Lily?"
"Not of our loving friendship."