“So that is to be my life—­one of the blamed and ignored women?” Cherry mused, leaning on the rail, and watching the plunge of the receding water.  “Like the heroines of half the books—­only it always seemed so bold and so frightful in books!  But to me it just seems the most natural thing in all the world.  I love Peter, and he loves me, and the earth is big enough to hide us, and that’s all there is to it.  Anyway, right or wrong, I can’t help it,” she finished, rejoicing to find herself suddenly serene and confident, as the boat made the slip, and the passengers streamed downstairs and so across the ferry place and into the city.

It was twenty minutes past ten, a warm, sweet morning, with great hurrying back and forth at the ferry, women climbing to the open seats of the cable-cars, pinning on their violets or roses as they climbed.  In the air was the pleasant mingling of the scents of roasting coffee, salt bay-water, and softening tar in the paving, that is native only to San Francisco.  Cars clanged about the circle, hummed their way up into the long vista of Market Street, disturbing great flights of gulls that were picking dropped oats from the very feet of feeding horses.

Cherry sped through it all, beside herself now with excitement and strain, only anxious to have the great hands of the clock drop more speedily from minute to minute, and so round out the terrible hour that joined the old life to the new.  She was hurrying blindly toward the docks of the Los Angeles Line, absorbed in her one whirling thought, when somebody touched her arm, and a voice, terrifyingly unexpected and yet familiar, addressed her, and a hand was laid on her arm.

In utter confusion she looked up.  It was Martin who had stopped her.

CHAPTER XVIII

For a few dreadful seconds a sort of vertigo seized Cherry and she was unable to collect her thoughts or to speak even the most casual words of greeting.  She had been so full of her extraordinary errand that she was bewildered and sick at its interruption, her heart thundered, her throat was choked, and her knees shook beneath her.  Where was she—­what was known—­how much had she betrayed—­Her thoughts jumbled together in a tangle of horrified questioning.

Gasping, trying to smile, she looked up at him, while the ferry place whirled about her, and pulses drummed in her ears.  She had automatically given him her hand; now he kissed her.

“Hello, Cherry, where you going?” for the third time.

“I came into town to shop,” she faltered.

“You what?” She had not really been intelligible, and she felt it, with a pang of fright.  He must not suspect—­the steamer was there, only a short block away; Peter might pass them; a chance word might be fatal—­he must not suspect—­

“I’m shopping!” she said distinctly, with dry lips.  And she managed to smile.

“Well,” Martin said, smiling in turn, “surprised to see me?”