It was Hetty who gave Baird's letter to Judith on Monday morning, as soon as Judith returned from Fair Field. "Mr. Baird come in Saturday evenin' an' he look mighty surprised when I tol' him you was gone," Hetty said, "an' yestiddy mo'nin' Sam Jackson, he come from de club fetchin' this letter.... Honey, you ain't lookin' right smart—weren't de party no 'count?"

"Yes, the party was all right," Judith answered briefly. "I'm tired, that's all."

Hetty knew better, but what the trouble was she could not guess.

Hetty had lived with the Westmores for fifty years. She was born in a Westmore cabin and was a slave child when the war broke. On the morning when the Westmore slaves had celebrated their emancipation by departing from Westmore, Hetty had been left behind. She had clung to the family throughout the hard years, the only house-servant Westmore possessed until Edward's wife's money helped to resurrect the place. She had been mammy to all the Westmore children, had "toted" both Edward and Judith and had been sole mother to Sarah and Garvin, for Mrs. Westmore had soon faded into God's half-acre, leaving Judith to become mistress of Westmore; master of Westmore, in reality, for the colonel was no longer master of anything, least of all of himself.

Hetty had a dog's attachment to Westmore and the family, and for Judith, not merely attachment, but worship. Judith wielded the whip sometimes, her stinging, cutting tongue, and Hetty cowered under it, as on the night when she had let Sarah escape to the Mine Banks. Hetty had known that Sarah's change from gentleness to restlessness portended an out-break and was confident in the strength of her own arms, they had often restrained Sarah in the old days, but she had not had intelligence enough to circumvent cunning. Just as now, when she sensed tension in Edward, in Garvin, and in Judith, she was unable to determine the cause. As soon as Judith returned, pale and bright-eyed and with lips hard set, Hetty knew that she was in trouble of some sort. She could only wait upon her dumbly, watch her in canine fashion.

Judith did not read Baird's letter at once. She attended to her household first. When she knew she could shut herself away without fear of interruption, she opened it.

"Dear Wonder-Woman," Baird wrote.

"Though I feel that I have forfeited the joy of ever again calling you so, that you will be quite right if you decree never to see or speak to me again, I can't help thinking of you just as I always have, as the most wonderful woman I have ever known.

"You are big-natured and kind enough to forgive me for the other night? You are, aren't you? You know, don't you, that I meant no disrespect when I forgot for a moment that you are too fine, too far beyond me for me ever to touch? I've not been a very good sort, Judith—I dropped for a moment into old ways. If by my fault I have lost your friendship, I feel that I shall lose the best thing that has ever come into my life. You have kept me to decent ways—you have taught me reverence for much that I used to consider loosely. That's why you are, and always will be the Wonder-woman.

"Will you forgive me and let me try in the future to be better worthy of your friendship and your kindness? I want them both, more than I have ever wanted anything.

"Yours in sincere regret,

"Nickolas Baird."

Judith had known that it would be a withdrawal of some sort.... She sat for a long time with the letter in her lap, looking straight before her, feeling rather than thinking. Then she got up abruptly, let the pages fall, and went to the window, looking down on Westmore, at the terraces, off over the country with its promise of plentiful harvest, then up at the Westmore half-acre.... God's half-acre?... He had dealt hardly with some who lay there, and He had dealt hardly with her.

With the ache of irreparable loss torturing her, Judith went back in bitter retrospect over the years. What chance had she had? She had given her youth to Westmore; every nerve, every energy, every atom of her brain and body strained, year in and year out, to the one purpose, the conservation of the family. Her mother had slipped away and left the burden to her. Her father had weighted the burden until it was mountain-high, then had left her to carry it. Edward had flung aside family allegiance and had gone; Sarah had worse than failed her, added dread and a stigma to the burden; Garvin had remained, but more of an anxiety than a help.... Edward had come back to allegiance, tried through the last ten years to lighten her burden as much as possible, and now had lifted it to his own shoulders, but that could not bring back her youth or soften the callouses on her shoulders. They were attached to the bone, by long galling become an irremovable part of her. She was thirty-four; she had crossed the apex; she had started on the downward way.... And that letter told her so.

Cheeks white and eyes flaming, Judith stared at God's half-acre. What chance had she had? What had He sent her in those twenty years of struggle? She had worked faithfully, but what had He done to satisfy the woman in her—the ache for life! A cousin had made love to her and a nobody, a boy whose father had been overseer of slaves, had ventured to tell her that he loved her, and both romances had had their inception and their close back in the years when she was young enough to be all appeal and no brain—the sort upon which Baird would expend himself—some brainless pretty girl who would have no conception of the possibilities that lay in the man who would be mad over her.

Judith turned from the window, goaded into restless pacing by the thought. Some girl who could smile like Ann Penniman! Just allure, nothing more, but the thing that captures, nevertheless.... Baird had come to her too late; not too late if she had been like some women, experienced in the art of capture. Though cumbered by thirty-four years, she was as inexperienced as any girl, and far more ineffective because made awkward by pride and a consciousness of the overwhelming thing which had grown and grown in her until it had led her to that moment in his arms.

Judith's tightly-gripped hands twisted when she thought of that sudden offering. What woman who was not made a fool of by passion would have made that mistake!... Or what woman possessed of an iota of strategic ability would, after making one mistake, have made another, allowed her pride to carry her away when her one hope lay in the elimination of pride? Had she remained at Westmore, Baird would be hers now, and quite unconscious that he had been a dilatory lover; and she had beauty and charm enough to have kept him in ignorance. He would have married her in ignorance and been happy, as thousands of other men had married and been content, for she had a beautiful body and a clear understanding of both his possibilities and his defects. And she loved him completely.

But she had blundered stupidly, irremediably—loosened the hold she had on him by one uncontrollable act, and, by another misstep, had given his usually cool brain time to adjust itself and pen her that cruelly clever letter.... It was damnably clever; it eliminated himself, and pointed out to her the only role it would be possible for her to play.... She had lost him, and through her own fault—because she loved him too much. She wanted to scream; she had to hold herself with strong hands. If she had Sarah's taint in her, she would go mad.

It was the ache of desolation that finally brought Judith to her knees, laid her quivering across her bed, crying like a child under the lash. And it was pride and the tenacity that had held her to Westmore, a faint hope of the future, that, later on, nerved her to write her answer:

"Dear Nickolas:

"Of course you are forgiven, for I have succeeded in forgiving myself. At the risk of your thinking me immodest, I'll speak plainly—the moon and the spring-time were a little too much for us the other evening, and we behaved rather foolishly. I'm some eight years older than you are, and I certainly should have known better, so I take the blame—if there is any—upon myself. Let us think of it as an incident, a bit of nature, or a bit of sweetness, or quite a reprehensible proceeding, or in any way that's proper to think of it, but certainly not as a thing that can for a moment affect our sincere liking for each other. I have enjoyed our friendship fully as much as you have, and I certainly want it to continue. If, as you say, I have helped you by stimulating that very good brain of yours, I am happy.

"Please be sure that you are always welcome at Westmore. We are all of us fond of you, and I'm as eager as can be to have you succeed. Edwin Carter was at Fair Field yesterday, and he spoke enthusiastically of you. He talked quite a long time to me about you and told me as a state secret that he was going to urge Mr. Dempster to send you to Europe in the autumn—he said they couldn't spare you till then. It will be splendid if they do that—I hope they will.

"Your affectionate friend,

"Judith Westmore."

"Don't forget Priscilla Copeley's lawn party on Wednesday. Elizabeth Dickenson and Christine Carter are coming out on the three-thirty, they told me."

The letter reached Baird that evening and he read it eagerly, then sat in thought over it for a time. It did not alter his conviction in the least, though it did call forth his sincere admiration. "She's fine—a thoroughbred! She knew just what note to strike!" Then his shrewdness added, "But I'm not forgiven—not a bit more than she forgives herself, and I'm sorry."

Baird got up and walked about then, half reflective, half restless. He had the evening on his hands; he couldn't go to Westmore until the next night—he must go then—what was he going to do for the next three moonlit hours—until he could go to bed?

He got his horse, finally, and rode through the cedar avenue; if Ann was about he would stop and talk with her.