But the thoughts, exactly like a pain, began to creep back.  With choking bitterness it was upon her again, and she got to her feet and went on.

“What am I thinking about—­it’s absurd!  Can’t people like each other, in this world, just because they happen to be married!  Peter would be the first to laugh at me.  And is it fair to Cherry even to think that she would—­

“Oh, but it’s true!” the honester impulse interrupted, mercilessly.  “It is true.  Whether it’s right or wrong, or sensible or absurd, they do love each other; that’s what has changed them both.”

And she began to remember a hundred—­a thousand—­trifles, that made it all hideously clear.  Words, glances, moods subtler than either, came back to her.  Cherry’s confusion of late, when the question of her return to Martin was raised, her indifference to her inheritance, her restless talk during one hour of immediate departure, and during the next of an apparently termless visit; all these were significant now.

“I am desperately unhappy!” Cherry had said.  And immediately after that, Alix recalled wretchedly, had come a brief and apparently aimless talk about Alix’s rights, and her eagerness to share them with her sister.

Cherry had been in misery, of course.  Alix knew her too well not to know with what suffering she would admit that the one desire of her heart was for something to which Alix had the higher, if not the stronger, claim.

“Poor Cherry!” the older sister said aloud, standing still for a moment, and pressing both hands over her hot eyes.  “Poor little old Cherry—­life hasn’t been very kind to her!  She and Peter must be so sorry and ashamed about this!  And Dad would be so sorry; of all things he wanted most that Cherry should be happy!  Perhaps,” thought Alix, “he realized that she was that sort of a nature, she must love and be loved, or she cannot live!  But why did he let her marry Martin, and why wasn’t he here to keep me from marrying Peter?  What a mess—­mess—­mess we’ve made of it all!”

As she used the term, she realized that Cherry had used it, too, this same evening, and fresh conviction was added to the great weight of conviction in her heart.

“She was thinking of that,” Alix told herself, “and it has been in Peter’s mind all these weeks.  Oh, Peter—­Peter—­Peter!” she moaned, writhing as the cry escaped her.  “Why couldn’t it have been me, why couldn’t it have been me!  Why couldn’t you have loved me that way?  I know I am not so pretty as Cherry,” Alix went on, resuming her restless walk, “and I know that those things don’t seem to mean as much to me as to most women!  But, Peter,” she said softly, aloud, “no wife ever loved a man more than I love you, my dear!” She remembered some of his half-laughing, half-fretful reproaches, when he had told her that she loved him much as she loved Buck, and that, in these respects, she was no more than a healthy child.  “I may be a child,” said Alix, feeling that a dry flame was consuming her heart, “but a child can love!  My dear—­my dear—­