ause those things will help to keep this idea before your mind. I
want you to forget me, Mr. Kendrick--do you realize that?--forget me
absolutely all the rest of the winter and spring. By that time--"

"I'll wonder who you are when we do meet, I suppose?"

"Exactly. You--"

"All right. I agree to the terms. No letters, no books, no--ye gods! if
I could only send the flowers now! Who would expect to win a girl
without orchids? You do, you certainly do, rate me with the
light-minded, don't you? Music also is proscribed, of course; that's the
one other offering allowed at the shrine of the fair one. All right--all
right--I'll vanish, like a fairy prince in a child's story. But before I
go I--"

With a dig of his steel-shod heel he brought himself and Roberta to a
standstill. He bent over her till his face was rather close to hers. She
looked back at him without fear, though she both saw and felt the
tenseness with which he was making his farewell speech.

"Before I go, I say, I'm going to tell you that if you were any other
girl on the old footstool I'd have one kiss from you before I let go of
you if I knew it meant I'd never have another. I could take it--"

She did not shrink from him by a hair's breadth, but he felt her
suddenly tremble as if with the cold.

"--but I want you to know that I'm going to wait for it till--Midsummer
Day. Then"--he bent still closer--"you will give it to me yourself. I'm
saying this foolhardy sort of thing to give you something to remember
all these months--I've got to. You'll have so many other people saying
things to you when I can't that I've got to startle you in order to make
an impression that will stick. That one will, won't it?"

A reluctant smile touched her lips. "It's quite possible that it may,"
she conceded. "It probably would, whoever had the audacity to say it.
But--to know a fate that threatens is to be forewarned.
And--fortunately--a girl can always run away."

"You can't run so far that I can't follow. Meanwhile, tell me just one
thing--"

"I'll tell you nothing more. We've been gone for ages now--there come
the others--please start on."

"Good-bye, dear," said he, under his breath. "Good-bye--till Midsummer.
But then--"

"No, no, you must _not_ say it--or think it."

"I'm going to think it, and so are you. I defy you to forget it. You may
see that lawyer Westcott every day, and no matter what you're saying to
him, every once in a while will bob up the thou