"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.
"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.
"Until lately," she was saying, and she was not saying at all what she meant to say; but here lately a change was taking place; something had come into her feeling for him that was new and strange—she could not understand—perhaps it had always been there; perhaps she was merely becoming conscious of it. And when she thought, as she had been thinking all day, of his long years of devotion—how badly she had requited them—it seemed that the least she could do was to tell him that he was now first in her life of all men—that much she could say; and perhaps he had always been, she did not know; perhaps, now that the half-gods were gone, it was at last the coming of the—the—She was deeply agitated now; her voice was trembling; she faltered, and she turned suddenly, sharply, and with a little catch in her breath, her lips and eyes opening slowly—her first consciousness, perhaps, a wonder at his strange silence—and dazed by her own feeling and flushing painfully, she looked at him for the first time since she began to talk, and she saw him staring fixedly at her with a half-agonized look, as though he were speechlessly trying to stop her, his face white, bitter, shamed, helpless, Not a word more dropped from her lips—not a sound. She moved; it seemed that she was about to fall, and Crittenden started toward her, but she drew herself erect, and, as she turned—lifting her head proudly—the moonlight showed that her throat was drawn—nothing more. Motionless and speechless, Crittenden watched her white shape move slowly and quietly up the walk and grow dim; heard her light, even step on the gravel, up the steps, across the porch, and through the doorway. Not once did she look around.
He was in his room now and at his window, his face hard as stone when his heart was parching for tears. It was true, then. He was the brute he feared he was. He had killed his life, and he had killed his love—beyond even her power to recall. His soul, too, must be dead, and it were just as well that his body die. And, still bitter, still shamed and hopeless, he stretched out his arms to the South with a fierce longing for the quick fate—no matter what—that was waiting for him there.