"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.