"It is certainly one of the cleverest schemes of getting rid of a fellow I ever heard. Hang it all! do you expect me not to understand that you are simply letting me down easy? It's not in reason to suppose that you're forbidding all other men the house. I beg your pardon; I know that's none of my business; but it's not in human nature to keep from saying it, because of course that's bound to be the thing that cuts. If you were going into a convent, and all other fellows were cooling their heels outside with me, I could stand it." "My dear Mr. Kendrick, you can stand it in any case. You're going to put all this out of mind and work at building up this business here in Eastman with Mr. Benson. You will find it a much more interesting game than the old one of--" "Of what? Running after every pretty girl? For of course that's what you think I've done." She did not answer that. He said something under his breath, and his hands tightened on hers savagely. They were rounding the last bend but one in the river, and the bonfire was close at hand. "Can't you understand," he ground out, "that every other thought and feeling and experience I've ever had melts away before this? You can put me under ban for a year if you like; but if at the end of that time you're not married to another man you'll find me at your elbow. I told you I'd make you respect me; I'll do more, I'll make you listen to me. And--if I promise not to come where you have to look at me till Midsummer, till the twenty-fourth of June--heaven knows why you pick out that day--I'll not promise not to make you think of me!" "Oh, but that's part of what I mean. You mustn't send me letters and books and flowers--" "Oh--thunder!" "Because 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.