Crittenden

"It's too bad."

Crittenden turned suddenly.

"It's a great pleasure."

"For which you have Mrs. Stanton to thank. You would have got it for

yourself five--dear me; is it possible?--five years ago."

"Seven years ago," corrected Crittenden, grimly. "I was more

self-indulgent seven years ago than I am now."

"And the temptation was greater then."

The smile at her mouth twitched her lips faintly, and still Crittenden

did not see; he was too serious, and he kept silent.

The clock-like stroke of the horse's high-lifted feet came sharply out

on the hard road. The cushioned springs under them creaked softly now

and then, and the hum of the slender, glittering spokes was noiseless

and drowsy.

"You haven't changed much," said Judith, "except for the better."

"You haven't changed at all. You couldn't--for better or worse."

Judith smiled dreamily and her eyes were looking backward--very far

backward. Suddenly they were shot with mischief.

"Why, you really don't seem to--" she hesitated--"to like me any more."

"I really don't--" Crittenden, too, hesitated--"don't like you any

more--not as I did."

"You wrote me that."

"Yes."

The girl gave a low laugh. How often he had played this harmless little

part. But there was a cool self-possession about him that she had never

seen before. She had come home, prepared to be very nice to him, and she

was finding it easy.

"And you never answered," said Crittenden.

"No; and I don't know why."

The birds were coming from shade and picket--for midday had been

warm--into the fields and along the hedges, and were fluttering from one

fence-rail to another ahead of them and piping from the bushes by the

wayside and the top of young weeds.

"You wrote that you were--'getting over it.' In the usual way?"

Crittenden glanced covertly at Judith's face. A mood in her like this

always made him uneasy.

"Not in the usual way; I don't think it's usual. I hope not."

"How, then?"

"Oh, pride, absence--deterioration and other things."

"Why, then?"

Judith's head was leaning backward, her eyes were closed, but her face

seemed perfectly serious.

"You told me to get over it."

"Did I?"

Crittenden did not deign to answer this, and Judith was silent a long

while. Then her eyes opened; but they were looking backward again, and

she might have been talking to herself.