Page:An orchard princess (IA orchardprincess00barbiala).pdf/193

 of a fortnight. Once or twice during that time he almost broke his resolution. Passing along the Avenue he frequently stopped at one of the cross streets to look wistfully along its sun-smitten pavements. Once, late at night, he turned into the forbidden thoroughfare and had approached within a block of her house before he pulled himself up. Then, after a hard struggle, he turned back.

"There's to be no compromise," he told himself, sternly. "Either you're going to keep to the letter of the law or you're going to turn traitor; and if you do that you don't deserve Christian burial!"

But always there was the unacknowledged hope that some day—on the street, in a store or a car—he would meet her. But he never did. And when June came he was trudging