usly observed the compact tacitly made
between them on the first and only occasion that he had ever spoken
words of love to her. They were the best of friends, the closest
companions, and their intercourse with each other was absolutely
frank and unrestrained, just as it would have been between two close
friends of the same sex; but they understood each other perfectly,
and by no word or deed did either cross the line that divides
friendship from love.

She trusted him absolutely in all things, and he took this trust as a
sacred pledge between them that until his part of their compact had
been performed, love was a forbidden subject, not even to be
approached.

So perfectly did Natasha play her part that though he spent hours and
hours alone with her on their exploring expeditions, and in rowing
and sailing on the lake, and though he spent many another hour in
solitude, weighing her every word and action, he was utterly unable
to truthfully congratulate himself on having made the slightest
progress towards gaining that love without which, even if he held her
to the compact in the day of victory, victory itself would be robbed
of its crowning glory and dearest prize.

To a weaker man it would have been an impossible situation, this
constant and familiar companionship with a girl whose wonderful
beauty dazzled his eyes and fired his blood as he looked upon it, and
whose winning charm of manner and grace of speech and action seemed
to glorify her beauty until she seemed a being almost beyond the
reach of merely human love--rather one of those daughters of men whom
the sons of God looked upon in the early days of the world, and found
so fair that they forsook heaven itself to woo them.

Trained and disciplined as he had been in the sternest of all
schools, and strengthened as he was by the knowledge of the compact
that existed between them, there were moments when his self-control
was very sorely tried, moments when her hand would be clasped in his,
or rested on his shoulder as he helped her across a stream or down
some steep hillside, or when in the midst of some animated discussion
she would stop short and face him, and suddenly confound his logic
with a flash from her eyes and a smile on her lips that literally
forced him to put forth a muscular effort to prevent himself from
catching her in his arms and risking everything for just one kiss,
one taste of the forbidden fruit within his reach, and yet parted
from him