away. He could then scrutinize her new charms as he never dared to do when he felt her demure eyes and Mel's cynical eyes watching him. He could take stock of the fine lines and tender curves which had emerged from her like grass in the spring. Brooding over her image in this glowing leisure, he lost all the sense of awkwardness which he had with June herself. His reveries were full of romping. He imagined her, at his arrivals, flinging herself upon him with a jolly shout. He imagined himself, when she had been too pert, threatening her with a mock anger from which she would run away, laughing. Then he would pursue her across a fantastically smooth lawn or among fantastically solemn trees, would gain upon her with no difficulty, would observe that she was growing frightened at her own flight, and would in the end find her turning in a pretty panic to run into his arms. He would imagine the two of them standing awed under the moon, and melting spontaneously into an inevitable embrace.

Something of this last sort, indeed, happened. One evening Kent and Mel talked the moon high into the warm sky. June, quiet most of the time, sat with them. When Kent started lingeringly for the gate where his horse was hitched, she walked between the friends. As she went, she took an arm of each of them, not romping, but leaning upon it with a soft weight. Kent felt not only her smooth shoulder but her round breast pressed against him. His blood stirred. Trying to appear unconscious he tried to see if she were as close to Mel as to him. He thought she was not. He drew his arm closer and she seemed to follow. Suddenly his heart Suddenly his heart began to thump so hard that he was

embarrassed. He had to knit the muscles of his throat to keep from panting. His tongue became too thick for speech. His wits buzzed with schemes for lengthening the stroll, but he could think of nothing plausible.

At the gate, Mel stepped ahead a little to open it. Kent, with a terrific effort to seem casual and yet communicative, loosened his arm and slipped it around June's waist. Her body was more solid than he had expected, but for an instant it yielded to his clasp. Then it tightened with a vigor which nearly threw him off his balance. He looked to see if she were vexed. All he saw was slightly parted lips and bright eyes uplifted to the moon.

Riding home, however, Kent was invaded with a doubt that June could have been so innocent as she seemed. What if she had taken his arm and pressed so close for the sake of encouraging him? What if her momentary yielding had shown her real sentiments and her quick withdrawal had been mere coquetry? He flushed at the suspicion that she may have regarded him as a laggard, slow to snatch occasions when they presented themselves. He remembered the talk of various associates at college, most of whom took it for granted that girls no older than June were ripe for love and that they secretly laughed at the youths who addressed them timidly. In the contagious moonlight Kent grew bold. Another time, he vowed, this girl would have no excuse for laughing at him. He, now, would be the aggressor. He would pursue her as she wanted him to do. Perhaps she would change her mind, but he would not change his. He exulted to think that there might be but one will in the close pursuit, and that will his. In the dangerous

moonlight the world had come to be inhabited by none but June and Kent. Mel was no longer there to keep them at arms' length. All the friendly circumstances of their lives retreated into an invisible background. Kent's pulses throbbed in the dense silence. The image of June which haunted him took on a sly luster. A wave of feverish longings poured over him.

Though in the daytime such moods rarely visited him, or, rather, were dissipated by the open light of the sun, Kent grew only more hot upon the trail of his desire as the summer passed. He did not think of his impulse as so specific a thing as desire, as he did not think of it as so inclusive a thing as love. It was, little as he had a word for it, a kind of sport. Rooted to begin with in his instincts, it had been shaped as it grew by what he had heard and read of gallantry. Hearsay made the drama in which he believed himself to be acting. In that drama he was a nonchalant blade who had met a tempting and not too stubborn girl. There were, it was true, difficulties, but those it was his rôle to wave aside. had only to kiss, conquer, console a little, and forget. Then the curtain would punctually descend and the matter be concluded. Beyond the rising and the setting of the curtain his imagination did not travel.

§ 3

He

But the curtain, somehow, would' not rise. The presence of spectators seemed to hold it down. The lights would not go off at any seasonable time. Kent reproached himself for lack of strategy, and felt his eagerness increase under the delay. It was this eagerness which had kept him so late at home, even after Mel had gone back to

college, and which took him on his own last possible day to the Rutledge farm. Planless as he approached, he was more fortunate than he expected. June was in the orchard, well out of sight of the house, from which any one else could hardly have seen Kent as he came up. She called to him hilariously, raising her whole arm and whirling her hand in the air. He tied his horse, sprang over the fence, and went to her across the burned turf. His shoes slipped on the grass so that he could not draw near with the masterful stride which he would have liked. A little of his confidence left him. A half-wish that he might put off the eventful hour fluttered into his mind.

He had seen himself bursting upon her and surprising her with a caress. Instead, he had to come, under the gantlet of her eyes, through an ordeal of slippery turf and candid sunlight. By the time he reached her his mood and scheme had changed. It would be ridiculous, he feared, to do more than shake hands with her. Even that seemed formal. He must cover it with some light speech.

"Hail, nymph of the orchard!" he said. He put out his hand with an exaggerated gesture.

"Hello, Kent."

It was disappointing to have her answer him so ordinarily. He had, it seemed, wasted his stratagem. But the touch of her hand restored him. It was broad-palmed, firm-fingered. It did not weakly crumple up in his, as did some girls' hands, but met the clasp as a hand should. Its warmth, he thought, spoke to him. to prolong the touch. Craftily he shook it up and down and then swung it from side to side. June, laughing, responded, with a strength he had not

He wanted

looked for. He wondered how long he might continue. Then, all of a sudden, he realized that her hand had left his. It had relaxed and escaped by a perturbing magic.

He did not know whether she had thus retreated, perhaps to tease him further, or whether she had merely failed to relish his advances. In either case, he was ill at ease again. Whereas, while he held her hand, he had intended the next moment to drop his arm with a large carelessness across her shoulder, he now felt a clumsy gulf between them.

His fingers wanted to bury themselves in it. Kent cupped his fingers over her and pressed downward. "Your head is no bigger than an apple."

"Then suppose you pick an apple and not my head."

Though there was not the faintest accent of reproof in her words, Kent felt reproved, as if he had been caught at a trick. He went to work. When he had picked as many apples as he could reach, he climbed the tree and shook down others, showering them about June's head. June scurried to safety and made agreeable threats.

"Guess," she laughed again. "But you never could. I'm picking apples. People make pies out of them." "Are you people?" "Well, I make pies."

"I think you need help."

"Not with the pies. But you can help me with the apples. The cows got in last night and ate all that were on the ground. You'll have to climb a tree. I was just going to when you came."

Kent picked up her basket.
"Which tree?"

"This one we 're under. Do you see those red ones on that limb?"

"Why, I can reach those without climbing. So can you."

"I can't."

She put up her hand and stood on tiptoe. Kent laughed at her, but he marked the round swell of her arm.

"I can't believe you 're no taller than that." He touched her hand. "And your poor head comes only up to here." He laid his hand on her hair. For all there was so much of it, it seemed incredibly soft. And yet it was incredibly alive. It made his hand tingle.

again, they filled the basket.

Then, instead of moving off with her toward the house, he threw himself down beneath the tree and began to eat an apple.

"How about the pies?" she asked him. "Never mind the pies. It's rest from our labors. I have worked so hard that I need food. And I need company." June seemed hesitant. "I need it very badly. I'm leaving tomorrow and I sha'n't be back for weeks." June sat obediently down beside him.

"I had n't realized how hot it was," she said.

Cross-legged, she leaned her back against the tree. Kent, stretched at full length, propped himself upon his elbows. He noticed the dry, bruised smell of the grass near his face. He felt splashes of sun and shadow along his body. There was the quiet of sleep in the orchard, a warm sleep which was still not heavy. He had a sense that he must speak softly or he might wake the orchard. He felt a dissonance in the cawing, in different pitches, of two crows near-by. The drone of the bees was more harmonious.

It suited the languor into which June had fallen. Her shoes, scratched by the stubble, and her tan skirt, pricked here and there by briers, reminded Kent that she had been busy, but now she was suddenly idle. Only her breath stirred in her. One hand lay open on her lap, and the other rested half shut on the ground beside her. Kent looked hungrily at it. His eyes followed the line of her forearm, the young arch of her shoulder, to the hollow of her strong, sweet throat. He saw that small beads of moisture had gathered on her forehead and her temples, and that short hairs had curled down over them. She seemed to glow as heretofore her image alone had done, when he had brooded upon it away from her. He grew strangely excited.

He wanted to manoeuver to take her hand, but for some reason he could not bring himself to do even that. With what air could he go about it? There had been no words of tenderness between them, and so there was, he guessed, a long way which they had not gone. Nor could he seize upon her violently without unsettling the equilibrium of their mood. One inch beside the mark, and he would be ludicrous. He could think of nothing but his accustomed air of condescension.

At that Mel seemed to Kent to come and stand beside them. He was as present as he had ever been in flesh and blood. What Kent felt could hardly be called fear that Mel would be outraged if he knew of the sultry intentions of his friend. If it had been fear, Kent would have felt it before. This was, instead, an awareness which had risen from a neglected region of Kent's mind. Suddenly he saw June and Mel and himself fixed in a secure pattern which he had aimed to break. If the pattern had been joined by force he might more dashingly have challenged it, but it was joined by nothing stouter than delicate use and wont, and therefore could not be broken without thought. To snap even a single thread would be to tangle the whole web in which they were bound. The loose ends, to Kent's imagination, twisted and hissed like snakes.

Still, there was June, with her warm hands and red lips. Surely she would despise him if he were so easily turned back from his pursuit. And he would despise himself. Again he let his eyes wander over her. They speculated upon the softness of her round knees, upon the slope of her white side. He ached to overwhelm her, to plunder her of the kisses which he saw trembling on her mouth. His mood, however, was more complex than it had been. As if the thought of Mel had brought in some enemy to his plans, they had grown more insistent. His blood had been hot before. Now it was both hot and turgid. It stifled him as it crawled through his thumping veins. Yet the enemy of his blood, which was thought, was no less insistent than his blood. It held his hands

while his blood burned.