Crittenden

"He"--not even now did she mention his name--"wrote to me again, not

long ago, asking to see me again. It was impossible. And it was the

thought of you that made me know how impossible it was--you." The girl

laughed, almost hardly, but she was thinking of herself when she

did--not of him.

The time and circumstance that make woman the thing apart in a man's

life must come sooner or later to all women, and women must yield; she

knew that, but she had never thought they could come to her--but they

had come, and she, too, must give way.

"It is all very strange," she said, as though she were talking to

herself, and she rose and walked into the warm, fragrant night, and down

the path to the stiles, Crittenden silently following. The night was

breathless and the moonlit woods had the still beauty of a dream; and

Judith went on speaking of herself as she had never done--of the man

whose name she had never mentioned, and whose name Crittenden had never

asked. Until that night, he had not known even whether the man were

still alive or dead. She had thought that was love--until lately she

had never questioned but that when that was gone from her heart, all was

gone that would ever be possible for her to know. That was why she had

told Crittenden to conquer his love for her. And now she was beginning

to doubt and to wonder--ever since she came back and heard him at the

old auditorium--and why and whence the change now? That puzzled her. One

thing was curious--through it all, as far back as she could remember,

her feeling for him had never changed, except lately. Perhaps it was an

unconscious response in her to the nobler change that in spite of his

new hardness her instinct told her was at work in him.

She was leaning on the fence now, her elbow on the top plank, her hand

under her chin, and her face uplifted--the moon lighting her hair, her

face, and eyes, and her voice the voice of one slowly threading the

mazes of a half-forgotten dream. Crittenden's own face grew tense as he

watched her. There was a tone in her voice that he had hungered for all

his life; that he had never heard but in his imaginings and in his

dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding

at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made

effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a

wistful, changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is

bright and clouds run swiftly. She turned on him like a flame now.