"It is all over, Mr. Millard. Take them, please."
"I—I have not—asked you to release me, Phillida."
"You have said that we can not go on in this way. I say the same. It—" she could not speak for a quarter of a minute; then she slowly finished her sentence with an effort of desperation and without raising her eyes to his—"it is better that it is over."
"Is it over?" he asked, stunned. "Think what you say."
"We have agreed that we can not go on," she answered. "You must take these. I can not keep them."
"Don't make me take them. Why not keep them?"
"I will send them to-morrow. I can not retain them."
Millard could not take them. He would have felt much as he might in rifling a grave of its treasures had he lifted those tokens from the table. But he saw, or thought he saw, that remonstrances might make Phillida more unhappy, but that it would be perfectly useless. It was better to accept his fate, and forbear. He tried to say something to soften the harshness of parting, but his powers of thought and speech deserted him, and he knew that whatever he would say must be put into one or two words. He looked up, hesitatingly stretched out his hand, and asked huskily:
"Part friends?"
Phillida, pale and speechless, took his hand a moment, and then he went out. She leaned her head against the window-jamb, lifted the shade, and watched his form retreating through the drizzly night until he disappeared from view, and then she turned out the lights. But instead of returning to her mother and Agatha in the basement, she threw herself on the floor, resting her arms on the sofa while she sobbed in utter wretchedness. All her courage was spent; all her faith had fled; helpless, wounded, wretched as a soul in bottomless perdition, she could see neither life nor hope in any future before her. She had believed herself able to go on alone and to bear any sacrifice. But in losing him she had lost even the power to pray.