this hilltop, a leaf upon this tree might strive and strive to
cling to the bough, to remain with its larger self--yet would it be
twisted off and carried whither the wind willed! My passion is that
tempest and my soul is that leaf."

"It is more than a year since first I told you that I could not return
your feeling. Last October--that day we rode to the old mill--I told you
so again, and told you that if we were to remain friends it could only
be on condition that you accepted the truth as truth and let the storm
you speak of die! You promised--"

"Even pale friendship, Judith--I wanted that!"

"If you wish it still, all talk like this must cease. After October I
thought it was quite over. All through the winter those gay, wonderful
letters that you wrote kept us up at Greenwood--"

"I could hear from you only on those terms. I kept them until they, too,
were of no use--"

"When I wrote to you last month--"

"I knew of your happiness--before you wrote. I learned it from one
nearly concerned. I--I--" He put his hand to his throat as if he were
choking, arose, and walked a few paces and came back. "It was over there
near Gordonsville--under a sunset sky much like this. What did I do that
night? I have a memory of all the hours of blackness that men have ever
passed, lying under forest trees with their faces against the earth. You
see me standing here, but I tell you my face is against the earth, at
your feet--"

"It is madness!" said Judith. "You see not me, but a goddess of your own
making. It is a chain of the imagination. Break it! True goddesses do
not wish such love--at least, true women do not!"

"I cannot break it. It is too strong. Sometimes I wish to break it,
sometimes not."

Judith rose. "Let us go. The sun is down."

She took the narrow path and he walked beside and above her as before.
Darker crimson had come into the west, but the earth beneath had yet a
glow and warmth. They took a path which led, not by way of the wood, but
by the old Greenwood graveyard, the burying-place of the Carys. At the
foot of the lone tree hill they came again side by side, and so mounted
the next low rise of ground. "Forgive me," said Stafford. "I have
angered you. I am very wretched. Forgive me."

They were beside the low graveyard wall. She turned, leaning against it.
There were tears in her eyes. "You all come, and you go away, and the
next day brings news that such and such an one is dead! With the sound
of D