They were waiting in the car while Alix marketed; Cherry opened her purse and gave him the punched cardboard.

“I’ll tell Alix that I have a last dentist appointment at half-past ten,” she said.  “If she goes in with me, we’ll go to the very door.  But she says she can’t come in to-morrow, anyway.  I’ll write her to-night, and drop the letter on the way to the boat.”

“Better wait until we are in Los Angeles,” he said, pondering.  “I’m writing, too, of course.  I’m simply saying that it is one of the big things that come into people’s lives and that one can’t combat.  Perhaps some day—­but I can’t look forward; I can’t tell what the future holds.  I only know that we belong to each other, and that life might as well be ended as love!”

“To-morrow, then!” was Cherry’s only answer.  “I’m glad it’s so soon.”

“Good-bye!” said Cherry, leaning over the side of the car to kiss her sister.  Alix received the kiss, smiled, and stretched in the sun.

“Heavenly day to waste in the city!” said Alix.

“I know!” Cherry said, nervously.  She had been so strangely nervous and distracted in manner all morning that Alix had more than once asked her if there was anything wrong.  Now she questioned her again.

“You mustn’t mind me!” Cherry said, with a laugh.  “I’m desperately unhappy,” she said, her eyes watering.  “And sometimes I think of desperate remedies, that’s all.”

“I’d do anything in the world to help you, Cerise!” Alix said, sympathetically.

“I know you would, Sis!  I believe,” Cherry said, trembling, “that there’s nothing you wouldn’t give me!”

“That’s easily said,” Alix answered, carelessly, “for I don’t get fond of things, as you do!  My dear, I’d go off with Martin to Mexico in a minute.  I mean it!  I don’t care a whoop where I live, if only people are happy.  I’d work my hands to the bone for you—­ as a matter of fact, I do work ’em to the bone,” she added, laughing, as she looked at the hands that were stained and rough from gardening.

“How about Buck?” Cherry said, as the dog leaped to his place on the front seat, and licked his mistress’s ear.

Alix embraced him lovingly.

“Well—­if he wanted to go with you!” she conceded, unwillingly.  “But he wouldn’t!” she added, quickly.  Cherry, going to the train, gave her an April smile, and as she took her seat and the train drew on its way, it seemed to her suddenly that she might indeed meet Peter, but it would only be to tell him that what they had planned was impossible.

But on the deck of the Sausalito steamer, dreaming in the sunshine of the soft, lazy autumn day, her heart turned sick with longing once more.  Alix was forgotten, everything was forgotten except Peter.  His voice, his tall figure, erect, yet moving with the little limp she knew so well, came to her thoughts.  She thought of herself on the other steamer, only an hour from now, safe in his care, Martin forgotten, and all the perplexities and disappointments of the old life forgotten, in the flood of new security and joy.  Los Angeles—­New Orleans—­France—­it mattered not where they wandered, they might well lose the world, and the world them, from to-day on.