"Seven years ago," corrected Crittenden, grimly. "I was more self-indulgent seven years ago than I am now." "And the temptation was greater then." The smile at her mouth twitched her lips faintly, and still Crittenden did not see; he was too serious, and he kept silent. The clock-like stroke of the horse's high-lifted feet came sharply out on the hard road. The cushioned springs under them creaked softly now and then, and the hum of the slender, glittering spokes was noiseless and drowsy. "You haven't changed much," said Judith, "except for the better." "You haven't changed at all. You couldn't--for better or worse." Judith smiled dreamily and her eyes were looking backward--very far backward. Suddenly they were shot with mischief. "Why, you really don't seem to--" she hesitated--"to like me any more." "I really don't--" Crittenden, too, hesitated--"don't like you any more--not as I did." "You wrote me that." "Yes." The girl gave a low laugh. How often he had played this harmless little part. But there was a cool self-possession about him that she had never seen before. She had come home, prepared to be very nice to him, and she was finding it easy. "And you never answered," said Crittenden. "No; and I don't know why." The birds were coming from shade and picket--for midday had been warm--into the fields and along the hedges, and were fluttering from one fence-rail to another ahead of them and piping from the bushes by the wayside and the top of young weeds. "You wrote that you were--'getting over it.' In the usual way?" Crittenden glanced covertly at Judith's face. A mood in her like this always made him uneasy. "Not in the usual way; I don't think it's usual. I hope not." "How, then?" "Oh, pride, absence--deterioration and other things." "Why, then?" Judith's head was leaning backward, her eyes were closed, but her face seemed perfectly serious. "You told me to get over it." "Did I?" Crittenden did not deign to answer this, and Judith was silent a long while. Then her eyes opened; but they were looking backward again, and she might have been talking to herself. "I'm wondering," she said, "whether any woman ever really meant that when she said it to a man whom she--" Crittenden turned quickly--"whom she liked," added Judith as though she had not seen his movement. "She may think it her duty to say it; she may say it because it is her duty; but in her heart, I suppose, she wants him to keep on loving her just the same--if she likes him--" Judith paused--"even more than a very little. That's very selfish, but I'm afraid it's true." And Judith sighed helplessly. "I think you made it little enough that time," laughed Crittenden. "Are you still afraid of giving me too much hope?" "I am afraid of nothing--now." "Thank you. You were ever too much concerned about me."