And so, during her drive home, she had thought all the way of him and of herself since both were children—­of his love and his long faithfulness, and of her—­her—­what?  Yes—­she had been something of a coquette—­she had—­she had; but men had bothered and worried her, and, usually, she couldn’t help acting as she had.  She was so sorry for them all that she had really tried to like them all.  She had succeeded but once—­and even that was a mistake.  But she remembered one thing:  through it all—­far back as it all was—­she had never trifled with Crittenden.  Before him she had dropped foil and mask and stood frankly face to face always.  There was something in him that had always forced that.  And he had loved her through it all, and he had suffered—­how much, it had really never occurred to her until she thought of a sudden that he must have been hurt as had she—­hurt more; for what had been only infatuation with her had been genuine passion in him; and the months of her unhappiness scarcely matched the years of his.  There was none other in her life now but him, and, somehow, she was beginning to feel there never would be.  If there were only any way that she could make amends.

Never had she thought with such tenderness of him.  How strong and brave he was; how high-minded and faithful.  And he was good, in spite of all that foolish talk about himself.  And all her life he had loved her, and he had suffered.  She could see that he was still unhappy.  If, then, there was no other, and was to be no other, and if, when he came back from the war—­why not?

Why not?

She felt a sudden warmth in her cheeks, her lips parted, and as she turned from the sunset her eyes had all its deep tender light.

Dusk was falling, and already Raincrow and Crittenden were jogging along toward her at that hour—­the last trip for either for many a day—­the last for either in life, maybe—­for Raincrow, too, like his master, was going to war—­while Bob, at home, forbidden by his young captain to follow him to Chickamauga, trailed after Crittenden about the place with the appealing look of a dog—­enraged now and then by the taunts of the sharp-tongued Molly, who had the little confidence in the courage of her fellows that marks her race.

Judith was waiting for him on the porch, and Crittenden saw her from afar.

She was dressed for the evening in pure white—­delicate, filmy—­showing her round white throat and round white wrists.  Her eyes were soft and welcoming and full of light; her manner was playful to the point of coquetry; and in sharp contrast, now and then, her face was intense with thought.  A faint, pink light was still diffused from the afterglow, and she took him down into her mother’s garden, which was old-fashioned and had grass-walks running down through it—­bordered with pink beds and hedges of rose-bushes.  And they passed under a shadowed grape-arbour and past a dead locust-tree, which a vine had made into a green tower of waving tendrils, and from which came the fragrant breath of wild grape, and back again to the gate, where Judith reached down for an old-fashioned pink and pinned it in his button-hole, talking with low, friendly affection meanwhile, and turning backward the leaves of the past rapidly.