"Then it was criminal."

"Both, if you wish; but credit me with at least the strength to confess
and the grace to be ashamed. But I'm beginning all over again now--by
myself."

He was flipping at one shaft with the cracker of his whip and not
looking at her, and Judith kept silent; but she was watching his face.

"It's time," he went on, with slow humour. "So far, I've just missed
being what I should have been; doing what I should have done--by a
hair's breadth. I did pretty well in college, but thereafter, when
things begin to count! Law? I never got over the humiliation of my first
ridiculous failure. Business? I made a fortune in six weeks, lost it in
a month, and was lucky to get out without having to mortgage a farm.
Politics? Wharton won by a dozen votes. I just missed being what my
brother is now--I missed winning you--everything! Think of it! I am
five feet eleven and three-quarters, when I should have been full six
feet. I am the first Crittenden to fall under the line in a century. I
have been told"--he smiled--"that I have missed being handsome. There
again I believe I overthrow family tradition. My youth is going--to no
purpose, so far--and it looks as though I were going to miss life
hereafter as well as here, since, along with everything else, I have
just about missed faith."

He was quite sincere and unsparing, but had Judith been ten years older,
she would have laughed outright. As it was, she grew sober and
sympathetic and, like a woman, began to wonder, for the millionth time,
perhaps, how far she had been to blame.