time in the lives of men like him--when he thought he had drunk his cup
to the dregs; had run the gamut of human experience; that nothing was
left to his future but the dull repetition of his past. Only those who
knew him best had not given up hope of him, nor had he really given up
hope of himself as fully as he thought. The truth was, he never fell
far, nor for long, and he always rose with the old purpose the same,
even if it stirred him each time with less and less enthusiasm--and
always with the beacon-light of one star shining from his past, even
though each time it shone a little more dimly. For usually, of course,
there is the hand of a woman on the lever that prizes such a man's life
upward, and when Judith Page's clasp loosened on Crittenden, the castle
that the lightest touch of her finger raised in his imagination--that
he, doubtless, would have reared for her and for him, in fact, fell in
quite hopeless ruins, and no similar shape was ever framed for him above
its ashes.

It was the simplest and oldest of stories between the two--a story that
began, doubtless, with the beginning, and will never end as long as two
men and one woman, or two women and one man are left on earth--the story
of the love of one who loves another. Only, to the sufferers the tragedy
is always as fresh as a knife-cut, and forever new.

Judith cared for nobody. Crittenden laughed and pleaded, stormed,
sulked, and upbraided, and was devoted and indifferent for years--like
the wilful, passionate youngster that he was--until Judith did love
another--what other, Crittenden never knew. And then he really believed
that he must, as she had told him so often, conquer his love for her.
And he did, at a fearful cost to the best that was in him--foolishly,
but consciously, deliberately. When the reaction came, he tried to
reestablish his relations to a world that held no Judith Page. Her
absence gave him help, and he had done very well, in spite of an
occasional relapse. It was a relapse that had sent him to the mountains,
six weeks before, and he had emerged with a clear eye, a clear head,
steady nerves, and with the one thing that he had always lacked, waiting
for him--a purpose. It was little wonder, then, that the first ruddy
flash across a sky that had been sunny with peace for thirty years and
more thrilled him like an electric charge from the very clouds. The
next best thing to a noble life was a death that was noble, and that was
possi