It wound steeply upward among the trees, with here and there a rude step fashioned of a boulder, and came out in an orchard on a hill.
Kenny stood stock-still.

Fate, he told himself, needed nothing further for his utter undoing.

And if she did, it lay here in the orchard.

He had come in blossom time.
Well, thanks to the crowded fullness of his emotional life, he knew precisely what it meant.

He had adventured in blossoms before to the torment of his heart and head.