Cherry’s thoughts were with Peter.  In her soul she felt as if his arm was about her, as if she were pouring out to him the whole troubled story, sure that he would rescue and console her.  She had wiped her eyes, and somewhat recovered calm, but she trusted herself only to shrug her shoulder as she preceded Mart to the train.

There was time for not another word, for Alix suddenly took possession of them.  She had had time to bring the car all the six miles to Sausalito, and meant to drive them direct to the valley from there.

She greeted Martin affectionately, although even while she did so her eyes went with a quick, worried look to Cherry.  They had been quarrelling, of course—­it was too bad, Alix thought, but her own course was clear.  Until she could take her cue from them, she must treat them both with cheerful unconsciousness of the storm.  She invited Martin to share the driver’s seat with her, pushing the resentful Buck into the tonneau with Cherry.

Alix, in the months that she had not seen him, had had time to develop a certain generous sympathy for Martin, but as she took the car swiftly through the warm, sweet summer day, she began to realize afresh just how serious Cherry’s problem was.  It was not merely that Martin chewed a toothpick as he talked to her, and took out a pen-knife to trim a finger-nail; it was not that he was somewhat vain, stupid, and opinionated, for the minor social deficiencies might have been remedied in a larger nature by an affectionate word, and there were times, Alix felt, when the best of men are insistent upon perverse and perverted views, and unashamed or unconscious of their limitations.  Martin had coarsened in the six years since they had first known him.  There had been something unspoiled, vigorous, and fresh about him then that was gone now.  Alix sensed that his associates in the mining towns in which he had lived had been men and women of a low type.  The defiling influence had left its mark.  Missing entertainment in his home, he had sought it elsewhere.

But besides these things Martin had a certain complacency, an assurance that would have been inexcusable even in great genius, a mental arrogance that nothing in his life in the least degree warranted.  He made no slight effort to adapt himself to the atmosphere in which he found his wife and her sister, interested himself for not one moment in their concerns, put out no feelers toward the mood that might have made him an agreeable addition to their group.  He conceded nothing; he was Martin Lloyd, mining engineer, philosopher, man of the world, and it was for them to listen to him, admire him, and praise and tease and flatter him in all he did.  Humility and shyness were never a part of Martin’s nature, but to-day he was galled by his talk with Cherry, and less inclined even than usual to abase himself.

“Does Peter let you drive the car on these mountain roads?” he demanded of Alix.