“Look here a minute!  Can they hear us?” Alix set down her pitcher of water, and came to stand beside him.

“Hear us—­Peter and Cherry?  No, Cherry’s out on our porch, and Peter’s porch is even farther away.  Why?”

“Take a look, will you?” he said.  “I want to speak to you!”

Alix, mystified, duly went to glance at Cherry, reading now in a little funnel of yellow light, and then crossed to enter Peter’s room.  His porch was dark, but she could see the outline of the tall figure lying across the bed.

“Asleep?” she asked.

“Nope!” he answered.

“Well, don’t go to sleep without pulling a rug over you!” she commanded.  “Good-night, Pete!”

“Good-night, old girl!” Something in the tone touched her, with a vague hint of unhappiness, but she did not stop to analyze it.  She went back through his room, and through the little passage, and rejoined Martin.  The freedom of Peter’s apartment Alix had always taken as naturally as she did the freedom of her father’s.

“Can’t hear us, eh?” Martin asked, when again she stood beside him.

“Positively not!” she answered.

“Look here,” he said, abruptly.  “What brought me up here is this.  Who’s making love to Cherry?”

Indignant, and with rising colour, she stared at him.

“Who—­what!”

“She’s having a nice little quiet flirtation with somebody,” Martin said, with a significant and warning smile.  “Who is it?”

“I don’t know who’s been talking to you about Cherry, Martin,” Alix said, sharply, “but you know you can’t repeat that sort of rotten scandal to me!”

“I don’t mean any harm—­I don’t mean any harm!” he assured her, with a quick attempt to quiet the storm he had raised.  “Don’t get mad—­don’t get mad!  But I happen to know that there’s some attraction that’s keeping Cherry here, and I came up to look over the ground for myself, do you see?”

His look, which was almost a leer, seemed to imply that Alix was in the secret, a party to Cherry’s foolishness, and did imply very distinctly that Martin felt himself to be more than a match for all their cunning.  The woman was silent, looking straight into his eyes.

“Come on, now, put me on!” he said.

Alix made an effort at self-control.

“Martin, you’re mistaken!” she said, quietly.  “You have no right to listen to any one who tells you such things, and if it wasn’t that you’re Cherry’s husband, I wouldn’t listen to you!  But you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s a lie.  We three have lived up here without seeing any one-any one!  Cherry has hardly spoken to a man, except Peter and Antone and Kow, since she came!”

“Who’s this George Sewall?” he asked, shrewdly.  “The lawyer!  Oh, heavens, Martin!  Why, George was a beau of mine; he’s a widower of fifty, and has just announced his engagement to the trained nurse that took care of his boy!”