“Oh, Martin—­” said her fluttered voice.  Even in the utter panic of heart and soul she knew that for safety’s sake she must find his vanity.

“I’m going to tell you something that will surprise you,” he said.  “I’m through with the Red Creek people!”

“Martin!” Cherry enunciated, almost voicelessly.

“You remember I wrote you that they fired Mason, and that I was doing his work and mine, too?”

“I—­I remember!” Cherry, seized by deadly nausea and chill, looked from a flower vendor to a newsboy, looked at the cars, the people--she must not faint.  She must not faint.

“Well—­but where are you going?  Home?”

“I was going to the dentist a minute, but it’s not important.”  They had turned and were walking across to the ferry.  She knew that there was no way in which she might escape him.  “What did you say?” she said.

“I asked you when the next boat left for Mill Valley?”

“We can—­go—­find out.”  Cherry’s thoughts were spinning.  She must warn Peter somehow.  It was twenty minutes of eleven by the ferry clock.  Twenty minutes of eleven.  In twenty minutes the boat would sail.  She thought desperately of the women’s waiting-room upstairs; she might plead the necessity of telephoning from it.  But it had but one door, and Martin would wait at that door.  The glow of meeting had already faded from his face, but he was loitering by her side, quite as a matter of course.

Suddenly she realized that her only hope of warning Peter was to send a messenger.  But if Martin should chance to connect her neighbourhood with the boat, when he met her, and her sending of a message to Peter here—­

“I think there’s a boat at eleven something,” she said, collectedly.  “Suppose you go and find out?”

She glanced toward the entrance of the Sausalito waiting-room, a hundred yards away, and a mad hope leaped in her heart.  If he turned his back on her—­

“What are you going to do?” he asked, somewhat surprised.

“I ought to telephone Alix!” Her despair lent her wit.  If he went to the ticket office, and she into a telephone booth, she might escape him yet!  While he dawdled here, minutes were flying, and Peter was watching every car and every passer-by, torn with the same agony that was tearing her.  “If you’ll go find out the exact time and get tickets,” she said, “I’ll telephone Alix.”

“Tickets?” he echoed, with all Martin’s old, maddening slowness.  “Haven’t you got a return ticket?”

“I have mileage!” she blundered.

“Oh, then I’ll use your mileage!” Martin said.  “Telephone,” he added, nodding toward a row of booths, “no hurry; we’ve got piles of time!”

She remembered that he liked a masculine assumption of easiness where all trains, tickets, railroad connections, and transit business of any sort were concerned.  He liked to loiter elaborately while other people were running, liked to pull out his big watch and assure her that they had all the time in the world.  She tried to call a number, left the booth, paid a staring girl, and rejoined him.