The month of March in the year of this tale was on the whole an extraordinarily mild and springlike piece of substitution for the rigorous, wind-swept season it should by all rights have been.  On one of its most beguiling days Roberta Gray was walking home from Miss Copeland’s school.  Usually she came by way of the broad avenue which led straight home.  To-day, out of sheer unwillingness to reach that home and end the walk, she took a quite different course.  This led her up a somewhat similar street, parallel to her own but several blocks beyond, a street of more than ordinary attractiveness in that it was less of a thoroughfare than any other of equal beauty in the residential portion of the city.

She was walking slowly, drawing in the balmy air and noting with delight the beds of crocuses which were beginning to show here and there on lawns and beside paths, when a peculiar sound far up the avenue caught her ear.  She recognized it instantly, for she had heard it often and she had never heard another quite like it.  It was the warning song of a coming motor-car and it was of unusual and striking musical quality.  So Roberta knew, even before she caught sight of the long, low, powerful car which had stood many times before her own door during certain weeks of the last year, that she was about to meet for the first time in two months the person upon whom she had put a ban.

Would he see her?  He could hardly help it, for there was not another pedestrian in sight upon the whole length of the block, and the March sunshine was full upon her.  As the car came on the girl who walked sedately to meet it found that her pulses had somehow curiously accelerated.  So this was the route he took, not to go by her home.

Did he see her?  Evidently as far away as half a block, for at that distance his motor-cap was suddenly pulled off, and it was with bared head that he passed her.  At the moment the car was certainly not running as fast as it had been doing twenty rods back; it went by at a pace moderate enough to show the pair to each other with distinctness.  Roberta saw clearly Richard Kendrick’s intent eyes upon her, saw the flash of his smile and the grace of his bow, and saw—­as if written upon the blue spring sky—­the word he had left with her, “Midsummer.”  If he had shouted it at her as he passed, it could not have challenged her more definitely.

He was obeying her literally—­more literally than she could have demanded.  Not to slow down, come to a standstill beside her, exchange at least a few words of greeting—­this was indeed a strict interpretation of her edict.  Evidently he meant to play the game rigorously.  Still, he had been a compellingly attractive figure as he passed; that instant’s glimpse of him was likely to remain with her quite as long as a more protracted interview.  Did he guess that?

“I wonder how I looked?” was her first thought as she walked on—­a purely feminine one, it must be admitted.  When she reached home she glanced at herself in the hall mirror on her way upstairs—­a thing she seldom took the trouble to do.