"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 Death's wings always in the air, how can any one—I do not wish to be angry. If you choose we will talk like friends—like a man and a woman of the South. If you do not, I can but shut my ears and hasten home and henceforth be too wise to give you opportunity—"
"I go back to the front to-morrow. Be patient with me these few minutes. And I, Judith—I will cling with all my might to the tree—"
A touch like sunlight came upon him of his old fine grace, charming, light, and strong. "I won't let go! How lovely it is, and still—the elm tops dreaming! And beyond that gold sky and the mountains all the fighting! Let us go through the graveyard. It is so still—and all their troubles are over."