Then she put her hand to her throat, and looked with a sort of terror at the silent figure of Cherry.  Nobody must know—­that was Alix’s first clear thought.  She was breathing hard, her breast rising and falling painfully, and the blood in her temples began to pound; her mouth was dry.

With a blind instinct for solitude she went quickly and silently from the sleeping porch, and into the warm sitting room.  The lamps were all extinguished, but the fire was still burning, low and pink, where the hearts of the logs had fallen apart to show the flame.

For a few minutes Alix stood, with one foot on the chain that linked the old brass fire dogs, her elbow on the mantel, and her cheek resting against her arm.

“No,” she whispered, almost audibly, “no—­it can’t be that!  It can’t be Cherry and Peter—­Oh, my God!  Oh, my God, it has been that, all the time, that, all the time—­and I never knew it—­I never dreamed it!”

The end of a log blazed up with a sudden bright flame, and in the light it cast about the quiet room Alix glanced nervously behind her.  Silence and shadow held the place; the bedroom doors were shut.  The fugitive red warmth picked out the backs of books—­Alix knew them all, had browsed over those shabby rows during a hundred winter nights—­touched the green shaded lamps, and the roses that were dropping their petals from the crystal bowl, and the polished legs of the old mahogany table.

Nothing moved, nothing stirred.  Everything in the little mountain cabin was at rest except the woman who stood, with aching heart and feverish mind, resting her arm on the level of the low mantel, and staring with desolate eyes into the fading heart of the fire.

“It’s Peter and Cherry!  They have come to care for each other—­ they have come to care for each other,” she said to herself, her thoughts rushing and tumbling in mad confusion as she tested and tried the new fear.  “It must be so.  But it can’t be so!” Alix interrupted herself in terror, “for what shall we do—­what shall we do!  Cherry in love with Peter.  But Peter is my husband—­he is my husband—­” And in a spasm of pain she shut her eyes, and flung her head as if suffocating.  The beating of her heart frightened her.  “I shall be sick if I go on this way!” she reminded herself.  “And then they will know.  They mustn’t know.  But Peter—­” she whispered suddenly.  “Peter, who has always been so good to me—­so generous to me—­and it was Cherry all the time!  While we were up here, reading and talking, and—­” her lips trembled, “—­and cooking,” she told herself, “he was thinking of Cherry—­he was always thinking of Cherry!  Even those years ago, when we used to tease him about the lady with the crinolines and ringlets, it was she.  But why didn’t he ask her instead of me?” wondered Alix, and with an aching head, and a frowning brow, she began to piece it all together.

The terrible truth rose triumphant from all her memories.  Sometimes for a second hope would flood her with almost painful joy, but inevitably the truth shut down upon her again, and hope died, and she realized afresh that sorrow, stronger than before, was waiting to seize upon her again.