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.

"I'm wondering," she said, "whether any woman ever really meant that
when she said it to a man whom she--" Crittenden turned quickly--"whom
she liked," added Judith as though she had not seen his movement. "She
may think it her duty to say it; she may say it because it is her duty;
but in her heart, I suppose, she wants him to keep on loving her just
the same--if she likes him--" Judith paused--"even more than a very
little. That's very selfish, but I'm afraid it's true."

And Judith sighed helplessly.

"I think you made it little enough that time," laughed Crittenden. "Are
you still afraid of giving me too much hope?"

"I am afraid of nothing--now."

"Thank you. You were ever too much concerned about me."

"I was. Other men may have found the fires of my conscience smouldering
sometimes, but they were always ablaze whenever you came near. I liked
you better than the rest--better than all----"

Crittenden's heart gave a faint throb and he finished the sentence for
her.

"But one."

"But one."

And that one had been unworthy, and Judith had sent him adrift. She had
always been frank with Crit