“Alix—­I know her!—­will only be sorry for me,” Cherry mused.  “She’ll only think me mad to disgrace the good name of Strickland; she’ll think we’re both crazy.  Perhaps she’ll plunge into the orphanage work, or perhaps she’ll go on here, gardening, playing with Buck, raising ducks—­she says herself that she has never known what love means—­says it really meaning it, yet as if the whole subject was a joke—­a weakness!”

“I believe she will forgive us, for she is the most generous woman in the world,” Peter said, slowly.  “Anyway—­we can’t stop now!  We can’t stop now!  It will take me only a few days now to close everything up, to arrange matters so that she shall have plenty of money, and so that I can carry on the affairs of my mother’s estate at long range.  Spencer will attend to the rents, mail me quarterly checks; the whole thing is simple.  And I will let you know—­”

“It all seems so unreal!” Cherry said, with her heart beginning to hammer with excitement.  “It doesn’t seem as if it was you and me, Peter.  I shall not need a trunk; I shall buy new things—­it will be a new life—–­” “There is the steamer line that goes to Los Angeles,” Peter mused.  “Yes—­I believe that is the solution,” he added, with a brightening face.  “Nobody you know goes there on it; it leaves daily at eleven, and gets into Los Angeles the following morning.  From there—–­”

“I don’t know anybody there!” Cherry said, eagerly.

“You wouldn’t see anybody anyway.  From there we can get a drawing-room to New Orleans; that’s only a day and a half more; and we can keep to ourselves if by any unlucky chance there should be any one we know on the train—­”

“Which isn’t likely!”

“Which isn’t likely!  Then at New Orleans we go either to the Zone, or to South America, or to any one of the thousand places—­New York, if we like, by water.  By that time we will be lost as completely as if we had dropped into the sea.  I’ll see about reservations—­the thing is, you’re too pretty to go quite unnoticed!” he added, ruefully.

He saw a smile flicker on her face in the moonlight, but when she spoke, it was with almost tearful gravity: 

“You arrange it, Peter, and somehow I’ll go.  I’ll write Alix—­I’ll tell her that where she’s sane, I’m mad, and where she’s strong, I’m weak!  And we’ll weather it, dear, and we’ll find ourselves somewhere, alone, with all the golden, beautiful future before us.  But, Peter, until this part of it’s over we mustn’t be alone again—­you mustn’t kiss me again!  Will you promise me?”

As stirred as she was, he gathered her little fingers together, and kissed them.

“I’ll promise anything!”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Cherry said, with a sort of feverish weariness.  “I’m all confused and frightened now; I only want it somehow—­somehow, to be over!  I want you to take me away somewhere,” she whispered, with the hands he was clasping resting on his breast, and her flowerlike face raised to his, “take me somewhere, and take care of me!  I only want you!”