"Charley, before God, I was not sincere in a word I said against Phillida. I lied with deliberate purpose. Now I know that you love her. That's what I wanted to find out. I only denounced her to get at your feelings. You wouldn't tell me, I had to resort to a ruse." "Do you think it--do you think it's the thing to pry into my feelings?" said Millard, still speaking hotly. "Yes, I do, under the circumstances. In return I'll tell you something worth your listening to, if you'll only cool off enough to hear it." Millard's curiosity was excited by this, but he made no reply; he only sat still with Philip's eyes fixed upon him. "Phillida loves you," said Philip. Millard looked steadily at the smallish figure of his old friend, not shrunken into the chair as usual now, but sitting upright and looking straight at him with a strange look he had never seen before. "Philip," he said softly, "how do you know this? Tell me, for God's sake!" "I must not betray confidence," said Philip. "You know me, your friend and Phillida's. I am here to-night--I might say heart-broken, I can hardly say disappointed. I don't blame Phillida for not caring for me except as a cousin, or for preferring you. On the whole, if I were in her place I'd do the same, by George!" Philip laughed again, that little laugh which pained his friend. "Why did you come to tell me this, Philip?" Millard was sitting now with his elbows on the table, and the fingers of his right hand supporting his cheek, as he regarded Philip steadily. "Well, if one can not contrive to do what one wants, he should, I suppose, do the second best thing. The only thing for me to do--the thing that'll be a comfort for me to look back on--is to render Phillida some service. In short, to save her life and make her happy." "How do you propose to do that?" asked Millard. "I've already done it, old fellow," said Philip, with a mixture of triumph and regret in his voice. "Dr. Gunstone said to Aunt Callender, after talking with Phillida, that unless her engagement with you were renewed she would probably not recover. I wouldn't have told you this for the world if I had found you didn't love her. She'd better die now than marry you and discover that you married her from pity." Millard went to his desk and took out the note from Mrs. Callender in which Phillida had refused to see him. He handed it to Philip. "I got that last week, and it seemed final," he said huskily. "I have found life almost more than I could carry since, Philip." Philip read the note and then returned it to Millard. "That's some of her confounded scruples," he said. "She told me that she had ruined your life. She thinks you wish to marry her from pity, and she'd rather die like a brave girl than consent to that. But she loves you and nobody else." "I wish I were sure of it," said Millard. Philip sat a good while silent.