“Oh, she did, did she?” he said, furiously, yet always in a cautious undertone.  “Well, now, I’ll tell you something!  She’s going to have a nice time proving that, and you can tell your sister—­if this is a frame-up, that I’ll fight Hatty Woods and fifty Hatty Woods!  I—­”

“Martin—­for Heaven’s sake!” Alix warned him, as she pressed her violets against her face.

“Well,” he said, surlily, “now you know how I feel about it!”

“Martin,” Alix pleaded, feeling that her last hope was sinking away from her, “can you deny her story?”

He was silent, while a beaming young Jewess in an outrageous gown took an encore for her song and dance.  Then he turned again toward Alix with the smile she had learned to hate.

“You get Cherry to deny that she’s never lost a chance to beat it away from home ever since she was married,” he said.  “You get her to deny that she has said over and over again that she never wanted children, that her marriage was a mistake!  You ask her to show you the letters I’ve written her, asking her to come back, and then I’ll show you the answers I got!”

“Mart,” Alix said, sharply, “there’s no use in your taking that tone with me!  I’m simply sick over the whole affair.  I would do anything in the world—­I would put my hand in the fire to straighten it out!”

She paused, arrested by some sudden thought.

“I tell you I would put my hand in the fire to help,” she said again, in quieter tones.  “But taking that attitude will do no good!  If this poor girl, this Hatty—­”

“I tell you to leave Hatty out of it!” Martin said.  “The best thing you can do is to let the whole thing alone!”

But she saw that he was both nervous and apprehensive, and she knew that the inference she and Cherry had drawn from the letter was a true one.

“Does Cherry know anything of this?” Martin presently muttered.

“Do you want her to?” Alix asked, pointedly.

He shrugged his shoulders with a great assumption of indifference.

“If she wants to have it all dragged to light, why, she can go ahead!” he remarked, carelessly.  “I’ve left Red Creek, and—­as I tell you!—­that woman will never write another letter, for I know the way to shut her up, and I intend to do it.  But if you and Cherry want the whole thing aired in public, why, go ahead!  I’m not stopping you!”

“At least I think you ought to let Cherry lead her own life after this!” Alix countered with spirit.

“Live in your old house, eh?” he asked, resentfully, as he flipped the pages of his program with a big thumb and stared at it with unseeing eyes.  “What does she want to live there for?”

“The fact remains that she does,” Alix persisted.

“Yes, and have just as good a time as if she never had been married at all!” he said.

“You know—­”