Under him he saw his mother’s eyes fill with tears, for these words of her son were the dying words of her lion-hearted husband.  And Judith had sat motionless, watching him with peculiar intensity and flushing a little, perhaps at the memory of her jesting taunt, while Grafton had stood still—­his eyes fixed, his face earnest—­missing not a word.  He was waiting for Crittenden, and he held his hand out when the latter emerged from the crowd, with the curious embarrassment that assails the newspaper man when he finds himself betrayed into unusual feeling.

“I say,” he said; “that was good, good!”

The officer who, too, had stood still as a statue, seemed to be moving toward him, and again Crittenden turned away—­to look for his mother.  She had gone home at once—­she could not face him now in that crowd—­and as he was turning to his own buggy, he saw Judith and from habit started toward her, but, changing his mind, he raised his hat and kept on his way, while the memory of the girl’s face kept pace with him.

She was looking at him with a curious wistfulness that was quite beyond him to interpret—­a wistfulness that was in the sudden smile of welcome when she saw him start toward her and in the startled flush of surprise when he stopped; then, with the tail of his eye, he saw the quick paleness that followed as the girl’s sensitive nostrils quivered once and her spirited face settled quickly into a proud calm.  And then he saw her smile—­a strange little smile that may have been at herself or at him—­and he wondered about it all and was tempted to go back, but kept on doggedly, wondering at her and at himself with a miserable grim satisfaction that he was at last over and above it all.  She had told him to conquer his boyish love for her and, as her will had always been law to him, he had made it, at last, a law in this.  The touch of the loadstone that never in his life had failed, had failed now, and now, for once in his life, desire and duty were one.

He found his mother at her seat by her open window, the unopened buds of her favourite roses hanging motionless in the still air outside, but giving their fresh green faint fragrance to the whole room within; and he remembered the quiet sunset scene every night for many nights to come.  Every line in her patient face had been traced there by a sorrow of the old war, and his voice trembled: 

“Mother,” he said, as he bent down and kissed her, “I’m going.”

Her head dropped quickly to the work in her lap, but she said nothing, and he went quickly out again.

IV