Judith came presently, her light quick step in the hall, then her actual presence, welcome in every movement, her cheeks warm and eyes very bright. She was still in black, but Baird thought he had never seen her look more youthful. Or was it simply because he felt so many years older than when he last saw her? "You here, Nickolas?" she said. Baird took the hands she held out to him, clasped them firmly. "Yes--to say good-by for a time--I'm sailing for France day after to-morrow. I've snatched a few minutes this afternoon because I wanted to see you." There were swift thoughts surging through Judith's brain, but her answer was spontaneous enough: "That was good of you!" "Yes, kind to myself," Baird said lightly. "I felt urged to come." Judith's smiling eyes had taken instant note of his appearance, and her keen perception was busied over him. He lacked buoyancy, lacked it utterly; every trace of boyishness was gone. He had aged, hardened. He had the air of a man who looks coolly and joylessly upon his future. Judith had learned nothing from Baird's letters. He had left the Ridge very suddenly; something had gone wrong. Probably Coats had intervened, or, possibly, when she had discovered herself an heiress, Ann had failed him. Judith had the jealous woman's bitter estimate of the girl who had brought both her brothers under her sway, and had entangled Baird also. The intensity of detestation she felt for Ann sometimes sickened Judith. That Ann had won part of Edward's fortune had ground Judith's detestation to a dagger's point. Under her brilliant exterior Judith was quivering. She had longed for the sight and touch of this man and, but for Ann, she might have recaptured him. Yet she had refrained from dealing the girl a blow. For months Judith's soul had been crisscrossed by passions and burdened by secrets. And Judith was in revolt. In revolt against conventions, against her rearing, against herself; against everything. She was typical of many women of her period; the restless craving woman of 1905 was at heart a revolutionary, and ten years of revolt have molded her into the feminist of to-day. Judith had been resolutely considering her future. What did life, lived as she was living it, offer her? Unproductive, undeveloping middle-years and a solitary old age. She felt that she had paid her last debt to Westmore, and that the future lay before her, to be lived in different fashion--if she had the courage to make the break. She had decided to make it. And in her visioning of the future Nickolas Baird was a prominent figure. He was an ambitious man, vastly capable, and destined for big things, and she could help him. He would not marry Ann; she felt certain that she could prevent it; it was her duty to prevent it. He would recover from his infatuation, for he was not the sort of man who would be held very long by an infatuation.