"You see, 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."