It had been a memorable meal, an hour always to have its place in their hearts.  In the two weeks since the day at the old house they had not chanced to be often alone, and to-night, for the first time, Cherry admitted that she could fight no longer.  A few days before she had again gone to the dentist, and again had waited for Peter at the great hotel.  But on this occasion he had not known of her engagement in town, and had lunched elsewhere, so that Cherry had waited, growing weary, headachy, and heartsick as the slow moments went their way.  Peter, happening to telephone to Alix, at about two o’clock, had learned that Cherry was in the city, and hanging up the receiver, had sat wrapped in agitated thought for a few minutes before rushing to the hotel on the desperate hazard of finding her there.

The sight of the little patient figure, the irradiation of her face, as they met, the ecstasy of delight with which their hands were joined, and the flood of joy in their hearts, as he took her to tea, was illuminating to them both.  Cherry had spent two long hours waiting only for the sight of that eager, limping, straight-shouldered form, and Peter had experienced enough anguish as he sped to find her to tear the last deception away.

To-night they talked as lovers, his arm about the soft little clinging figure, her small, firm fingers tight in his own.  He had squared about on the great log that was their seat so that his ardent eyes were closer to her; the world held nothing but themselves.  It was eight o’clock.

“So this is the thing that was waiting for us all these years, Cherry, ever since the time you and Alix used to dam my brook and climb my oak trees!”

“I never dreamed of it!” Cherry said, with wonder in her tone.

“If we had dreamed of it—­” Peter began, and stopped.

“Ah, if we had, it would all be different,” Cherry said, with a look of pain.  “That’s the one thing I can’t bear to think of!”

“What is?” he asked, watching the lovely face that was only dimly visible in the moonlight.

“Oh, that it all might have been so simple—­so easy and right!” the girl answered.  “That we might have been so happy instead of so sad—­”

“It makes you sad, dear?”

“Peter, how could it make me anything else?  Why, what can come of it?” Cherry asked, sorrowfully.  “I cannot stay on here, now.  I cannot—­” She freed herself from his arms, and walked away from him restlessly through the moonshine, twisting her arms above her head.  “I cannot go back to Martin!” he heard her whisper, in an agony.  “I can’t leave you—­I can’t leave you!”

“Shall we go away?” Peter asked, simply, when she stopped at the great stone that Alix, for the view it commanded, had christened Sunrise Rock.  Cherry dropped down upon it, facing away from him across the soft green luminous light of the valley.

“Go where?” she asked.

“Go anywhere!” he answered.  “We have money enough; we can leave Alix rich—­she will still have her cabin and her dogs and the life she loves.  But there are other tiny places, Cherry; there are little cabins in Hawaii, there are Canadian villages—­Cherry, there are thousands of places in the south of France where we might live for years and never be questioned, and never be annoyed.”