Crittenden

"Listen!"

Judge Page appeared in the doorway, welcoming Crittenden with old-time

grace and courtesy. Through supper, Judith was silent and thoughtful

and, when she did talk, it was with a perceptible effort. There was a

light in her eyes that he would have understood once--that would have

put his heart on fire. And once he met a look that he was wholly at loss

to understand. After supper, she disappeared while the two men smoked on

the porch. The moon was rising when she came out again. The breath of

honeysuckles was heavy on the air, and from garden and fields floated

innumerable odours of flower and clover blossom and moist grasses.

Crittenden lived often through that scene afterward--Judith on the

highest step of the porch, the light from the hallway on her dress and

her tightly folded hands; her face back in shadow, from which her eyes

glowed with a fire in them that he had never seen before.

Judge Page rose soon to go indoors. He did not believe there was going

to be much of a war, and his manner was almost cheery when he bade the

young man good-by.

"Good luck to you," he said. "If the chance comes, you will give a good

account of yourself. I never knew a man of your name who didn't."

"Thank you, sir."

There was a long silence.

"Basil will hardly have time to get his commission, and get to Tampa."

"No. But he can come after us."

She turned suddenly upon him.

"Yes--something has happened to you. I didn't know what you meant that

day we drove home, but I do now. I feel it, but I don't understand."

Crittenden flushed, but made no answer.

"You could not have spoken to me in the old days as you do now. Your

instinct would have held you back. And something has happened to me."

Then she began talking to him as frankly and simply as a child to a

child. It was foolish and selfish, but it had hurt her when he told her

that he no longer had his old feeling for her. It was selfish and cruel,

but it was true, however selfish and cruel it seemed, and was--but she

had felt hurt. Perhaps that was vanity, which was not to her credit--but

that, too, she could not help. It had hurt her every time he had said

anything from which she could infer that her influence over him was less

than it once was--although, as a rule, she did not like to have

influence over people. Maybe he wounded her as his friend in this way,

and perhaps there was a little vanity in this, too--but a curious change

was taking place in their relations. Once he was always trying to please

her, and in those days she would have made him suffer if he had spoken

to her then as he had lately--but he would not have spoken that way

then. And now she wondered why she was not angry instead of being hurt.

And she wondered why she did not like him less. Somehow, it seemed

quite fair that she should be the one to suffer now, and she was glad to

take her share--she had caused him and others so much pain.