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: