“I care—­” he said, quite involuntarily, “I have always cared for you!  I know it’s madness—­I know it’s too late—­but I love every hair of your beautiful head!  Cherry—­Cherry—!”

They had both gotten to their feet, and now she essayed to pass him, her face white, her cheeks blazing.  He stopped her, and held her close in his arms, and after a few seconds he felt her resisting muscles relax, and they kissed each other.

For a full dizzy minute they clung together, arms locked, hearts beating madly and close, and lips meeting again and again.  Breathless, Cherry wrenched herself free, and turned to drop into a chair, and breathless, Peter stood looking down upon her.  About them was the silence of the dripping garden; all the sounds of the world came muffled and dull through the thick mist.

Then Peter knelt down beside her chair, and gathered her hands together in his own, and she rested her forehead on his, and spent and silent, leaned against his shoulder.  And so they remained, not speaking, for a long while.  Kow clinked dishes somewhere in a faraway kitchen, and the fog-horn boomed and was still-boomed and was still.  But here on the porch there was no sound.

“Cherry, tell me that you care for me a little?” Peter said after awhile, and he felt as if he met a new Cherry, among all the strange new Cherries that the past bewildering week had shown him, when she answered passionately: 

“Oh, Peter—­Peter—­if I did not!”

He tightened his fingers about her own, but did not answer, and it was presently Cherry who broke the brooding, misty silence again.

“What shall we do?” she asked, in a small, tired voice.

Peter abruptly got to his feet, took a chair three feet away, and with a quick gesture of his hand and toss of his head, flung back his hair.

“There is only one thing to do, of course!” he said, decidedly, in a voice almost unrecognizably grim.  “We mustn’t see each other—­we mustn’t see each other!  Now—­now I must think how best to manage that!”

Her eyes, heavy with pain, were raised to meet his, and she saw his mouth weaken with a sudden misgiving, and she saw him try to steady it, and look down.

“I can—­I shall tell Alix that this new business needs me in town for two or three nights,” he said, forcing himself to quiet speech, but with one fine hand propping his forehead as if it ached.  “I’ll stay at the club.”

“And as soon as I can go,” Cherry added, feverishly, “I shall join Martin.  I suppose Alix would think it was perfectly idiotic for me to go now, just when the whole thing can be closed up so quickly, and Martin, too—­” her voice trailed away vaguely.  She fell silent, her eyes absent and full of pain.  Suddenly they widened, as if some pang had suddenly shaken her into consciousness again.  “Well, I’ll go back,” she began again, bravely, “I’ll leave you power—­what do they call it?—­power to act for me.  I can do that, can’t I?  I’ll wire Martin to-morrow—­this is Sunday, and I’ll go on Wednesday!” And as she looked off across the green spaces of fog-wreathed hills and valleys, they seemed to turn suddenly glaring and ugly to her, and she felt a great weariness and heartsickness with life.