ve me if I did wrong in
asking it. Henceforth I shall ask no more. If your life be happy, as I
pray God it may, you will have no need of me. If not, hold me ever to
your service as a true friend and brother."

She stooped, she leaned her brow upon the two clasped hands--her own and
his--and wept as if her heart were breaking.

But very soon all this ceased, and she felt a calmness like death. Upon
it broke Harold's cold, clear voice--as cold and clear as ever.

"Once more, let me tell you all I owe you--friendship, counsel,
patience,--for I have tried your patience much. I pray you pardon me!
From you I have learned to have faith in Heaven, peace towards man,
reverence for women. Your friendship has blessed me--may God bless you."

His words ceased, somewhat tremulously; and she felt, for the first
time, Harold's lips touch her hand.

Quietly and mutely they walked home; quietly and mutely, nay, even
coldly, they parted. The time had come and passed; and between their two
hearts now rose the silence of an existence.

CHAPTER XL.

Olive and Harold parted at Mrs. Flora's gate. He had business in town,
he said, but would return to dinner. So he walked quickly away, and
Olive went in and crept upstairs. There, she bolted her door, groped her
way to the bed, and lay down. Life and strength, hope and love, seemed
to have ebbed from her at once. She felt no power or desire to weep.
Once or twice, she caught herself murmuring, half aloud,

"It is all over--quite over. There can be no doubt now."

And then she knew, by this utter death of hope, that it must have lived
_once_--a feeble, half-unconscious life, but life it was. Despite her
reason, and the settled conviction to which she had tutored herself, she
must have had some faint thought that Harold loved her. Now, this dream
gone, she might perhaps rise, as a soul rises from the death of the
body, into a new existence. But of that she could not yet think. She
only lay, motionless as a corpse, with hands folded, and eyes firmly
closed. Sometimes, with a strange wandering of fancy, she seemed to
see herself thus, looking down, as a spirit might do upon its own olden
self, with a vague compassion. Once she even muttered, in a sort of
childish way,

"Poor little Olive! Poor, crushed, broken thing!"

Thus she lay for many hours, sometimes passing into what was either a
swoon or a sleep. At last she roused herself, and saw by the shadows
that it was quite late i