Sorrow and fear and pain, these wrestled with her spirit, that spirit that had never known them before.  She had grieved for her father a few years ago; she would always miss him and need him—­ perhaps never more than to-night.  But that was natural loss, softened by everything that love and loyalty and faith could give her, and this was a living anguish, which wrung and twisted her heart more terribly with every instant of its realization.

“Well—­I can’t stand it in here!” Alix said, suddenly.  The walls, the peaceful room, seemed to smother and stifle her.  She crossed to the door, and opened it, and slipped noiselessly out into the night, catching a coat from the rack as she passed.

The night was wrapped in an ocean fog, there was no moon and no stars, but the air was soft and warm.  The garden was so black that Alix, familiar with every inch of it as she was, groped her way confusedly between the wet bushes and shrubs.  Roses drenched her with fog and dew, a wall-flower springing erect as she passed by sent a wave of velvety perfume into her face.

When she gained the woods she made better progress, for under the great shafts of the redwoods there was little growth, and the ground was unencumbered and almost as smooth as a floor.  With no goal in view, Alix climbed upward, walking rapidly, breathing hard, and frequently speaking aloud, as some poignant thought smote her, or standing still, too sick with pain, under an unexpected rush of emotion, to move.

Sometimes some small woodland animal scrambled noisily through the dry brush, in escape, and now and then an owl, perhaps a mile away, broke the silence with a mournful and muffled cry.  Tiny squeaks and sleepy chirps from birds and chipmunks recognized the disturbance of a stranger’s passage through the wood, and once the ugly snarling of wild-cats, always alert in the night, sounded suddenly near, and then died as suddenly away.

Of these things Alix heard nothing.  In a trance of feverish dread she went on and on, trying to escape from the conviction that grew momentarily more and more clear.

“He would have told me about it—­why didn’t I let him!” ran Alix’s thoughts.  “I thought of some older woman, I don’t know why—­ anyway, I didn’t care so much then.  But I care now!  Peter, I care now!  I can’t give you up, even to Cherry.  It is nonsense to talk of giving him up,” Alix told herself, sitting down in the inky dark, on a log against which her wild walk had suddenly brought her, “for we are all married people, and we all love each other.  But oh, I am so sorry!  I am so sorry, Peter,” she whispered, as if she were speaking to him.  “You couldn’t help it, I know that.  She is so pretty and so sweet, Cherry—­and she turns to you as if you were her big brother!”

She sat motionless, her hands clasped, and raised so that her cheek was pressed against them.  For awhile she seemed to have no thoughts; she was merely vaguely aware that the hands she had plunged into the pockets of one of Peter’s old coats were scented with tobacco now, and so reminded her of him.  She pressed them hard against her face, as if to ease the pain of her forehead.