Saying this she set a chair for him, and without giving Phillida time to
recover from a confused rush of thought and feeling she returned to the
hall saying, "Come right in, Charley."
To take off the edge, as she afterward expressed it, she sat for three
minutes with them, talking chaff with Millard, and when she had set the
conversation going about indifferent things, she remembered something
that had to be done in the kitchen, and was instantly gone down-stairs.
The conversation ran by its own momentum for a while after Agatha's
departure, and then it flagged.
"You're going away," said Millard after a pause.
"Yes."
"I know it is rude for me to call without permission, but I couldn't
bear that you should leave until I had asked your forgiveness for things
that I can never forgive myself for."
Phillida looked down a moment in agitation and then said, "I have
nothing to forgive. The fault was all on my side. I have been very
foolish."
"I wouldn't quarrel with you for the world," said Millard, "but the
fault was mine. What is an error of judgment in a person of your noble
unselfishness! Fool that I was, not to be glad to bear a little reproach
for such a person as you are!"
To Phillida the world suddenly changed color while Charley was uttering
these words. His affection was better manifested by what he had just
said than if he had formally declared it. But the fixed notion that he
was moved only by pity could not be vanquished in an instant.
"Charley," she said, "it is very good of you to speak such kind words to
me. I am very weak, and you are very good-hearted to wish to comfort
me."
"You are quite mistaken, Phillida. You fancy that I am disinterested. I
tell you now that I am utterly in love with you. Without you I don't
care for life. I have not had heart for any pursuit since that evening
on which we parted on account of my folly. But if you tell me that you
have ceased to care for me, there is nothing for me but to go and make
the best of things."
Phillida was no longer heroic. Her sufferings, her mistakes, her
physical weakness, and the yearning of her heart for Millard's affection
were fast getting the better of all the reasons she had believed so
conclusive against the restoration of their engagement. Nevertheless,
she found strength to say: "I am quite unfit to be your wife. You are a
man that everybody likes and you enjoy society, as you have a right to."
Then after a pause and an evident struggle to control herself she
proceeded: "Do you think I would weight you down with a wife that will
always be remembered for the follies of her youth?"
Phillida did not see how Charley could answer this, but she was so
profoundly touched by his presence that she hoped he might be able to
put matters in a different light. When she had finished speaking he
contracted his brows into a frown for a moment. Then he leaned forward
with his left hand open on one knee and his right hand clinched and
resting on the other.
"I know I gave you reason to think I was cowardly," he said; "but I hope
I am a braver man than you imagine. Now if anybody should ever condemn
you for a little chaff in a great granary of wheat it would give me pain
only if it gave you pain. Otherwise it would give me real pleasure,
because I would like to bear it in such a way that you'd say to
yourself, 'Charley is a braver man than I ever thought him.'" Millard
had risen and was standing before her as he finished speaking. There was
a pause during which Phillida looked down at her own hands lying in her
lap.
"Now, Phillida," he said, "I want to ask one thing--"
"Don't ask me anything just now, Charley," she said in a broken voice
full of entreaty, at the same time raising her eyes to his. Then she
reached her two hands up toward him and he came and knelt at her side
while she put her arms about his neck and drew him to her, and
whispered, "I never understood you before, Charley. I never understood
you."