for her the lofty
Dakota Flats rising from a rather naked plain to the westward, the low
southern facade of the Art Museum to the northward, to the east the
somber front of the Lenox Library,--as forbidding as the countenance of
a rich collector is to him who would borrow,--and the columnar gable
chimneys of the Tiffany house.

Millard now guided Phillida to a descending path on the side of the hill
opposite to that by which they had come up, and which perversely turned
southeastward for a while, it having been constructed on the theory that
a park walk should describe the longest distance between any two points.
Here he found a seat shaded by the horizontal limbs of an exotic tree
and confronted by a thicket that shut out at this season almost all but
little glimpses of the Tiffany house and the frowning Lenox. He asked
Phillida to sit down, and he sat beside her. The momentary silence that
followed was unendurable to Phillida's excited nerves, so she said:

"Mr. Millard, it was a splendid thing to do."

"What?"

"To give that chair to Mina Schulenberg, and all so quietly."

"Miss Callender--Phillida--may I call you Phillida?"

A tone of entreaty in this inquiry went to her heart and set her
thoughts in a whirl. It was not possible to say "No." She did not lift
her eyes from the asphalt, which she was pushing with the ferrule of her
parasol, but she said "Yes," filled with she knew not what pleasure at
having Millard use this familiarity.

"Phillida, you have taught me a great deal. It is to you that the poor
girl owes her ride to-day, and to you that I owe the pleasure of seeing
her enjoy it. I'm not so good as you are. I am a rather--a rather
useless person, I'm afraid. But I am learning. And I want to ask you
before I go away whether you _could_ love me?"

Phillida kept trying to bore into the pavement with her parasol, but she
did not reply.

After a pause Millard went on. "I know you don't decide such things by
mere passion. But you've had reason to think that I loved you for a good
while. Haven't you?"

"I--I think I have." This was said with difficulty after a pause of some
seconds.

"And you must have thought about it, and turned it over in the light of
duty. Haven't you--Phillida?"

This address by her Christian name startled her. It was almost like a
caress. But presently she said, "Yes; I have." She remembered that her
prayer this very morning had been that before she should be called upon
to