She had it to face immediately, too.  She knew that every hour of postponement would cost her fresh humiliations and difficulties.  He did not love her, but he was quietly taking her for granted again, and until she could summon courage to speak to him with utter frankness and finality, he would of course claim his position as her husband.

The thought threw her into a nervous agitation almost as frightful as that of meeting him had been, and again she felt the dizzy faintness and sickness of that moment.

The trip from San Francisco to Sausalito occupies exactly half an hour; after that there was a train trip of twenty minutes.  Cherry knew that what was done must be done in that time.  In Mill Valley Alix would meet them, perhaps willing to take any cue that Cherry gave her, as to their relationship, but of course anxious to have that relationship as pleasant and normal and friendly as possible.

Her head was still rocking from the shock of the experiences of the last hour and the last fortnight.  Even had she met Peter it might have been to yield with a sort of collapse to mental and physical exhaustion.  But to be forced to make a fresh effort now, one of the crucial and fearful struggles of a lifetime, to present her case to Martin now, and force him to her viewpoint, was almost impossible.

Yet Cherry knew that it must be done, and as the boat slipped smoothly past the island that roughly marked the halfway point, she gathered all her forces for the trial.

Martin was meanwhile energetically presenting to her the arguments that had convinced him that he must give up the Mexico position.  She vaguely appreciated that someone named Murry was a traitor, and that the “whole bunch” were “rubes,” but her mind was busy with its own problem all the while, and the one distinct impression she had from Martin was the appalling one that he did not dream that she had decided to sever their union completely and finally.

“Well, how’s the valley?  Bore you to death?” he interrupted the flow of his own topic to ask carelessly.

“Oh, no, Martin!” she quivered.  “I—­I love it there!  I always loved it!”

“Alix is a fine girl—­she’s a nice girl,” Martin conceded.  “But I can’t go Peter!  He may be all right, all that lah-di-dah and Omar Khayyam and Browning stuff may be all right, but I don’t get it!” And he yawned contentedly in the sunshine.

After a few seconds he gave Cherry an oblique glance, expecting her resentment.  But she was thinking too deeply even to have heard him.  Her mind was working as desperately as a caged animal, her thoughts circling frantically, trying windows, walls, and doors in the prison in which she found herself, mad for escape.

She blamed herself bitterly now for allowing him, in the surprise and fear she felt, in the shock of their unexpected meeting, to arrange this domestic and apparently reconciled return to the valley house.  Had she known beforehand that they were to meet she would have steeled herself to suggest to him coldly that they lunch somewhere, and talk.  She could imagine now the quiet significance with which she would have stressed the phrase, “Martin, I want to talk to you.”