“And now we’ve got to go down and get the others, for they’re coming up here for dinner,” Alix said.  “Do you—­do you feel up to tennis?” she asked, anxiously.

“Sure I do!” Peter answered with an effort.

“Don’t have to, you know,” she assured him, feeling a great desolation sweep her.

“Oh, I’d like it.  It’s a wonderful day,” he answered, politely.

He followed her to the car and got in the front seat beside her.

“You’re awfully good to me,” he said, briefly, when they were going down the long grade.

Alix did not answer immediately, and he thought that she had not heard.  She ran the big machine through the valley, where the dry, glaring heat of the day burned mercilessly, stopped at the post-office, and still in silence began the climb toward the old house.  The roads were all narrow here, but she could have followed them in the dark, he knew, and he understood that it was not her driving that made her face so thoughtful and kept her eyes from meeting his.

On one side of the shelf-like mountain road rose the sharp hillside, clothed in close-packed, straight-rising redwoods; on the other the ground fell away so precipitously to the tiny thread of creek below that they looked down upon the water through the top branches of the trees.  Years ago, when he had first entrusted her with the car, Peter had been somewhat concerned for Alix’s safely, but now he was secretly proud of her sureness of touch and of the generosity and self-confidence that prompted her to give the inner right of way to every lumbering express van or surrey that she met, and risk the more dangerous passing herself.

“You say I’m good to you, Pete,” she surprised him by saying suddenly.  “I hope I am.  For you’ve been very good to me, my dear.  There’s only one thing in life now that I haven’t got, and want.  And that, you can’t, unfortunately, get for me.”

He had flushed darkly, and he spoke with a little effort.

“I’d like to try!”

She ignored the invitation for a few minutes, and for an instant of panic he thought he saw her lip tremble.  But when she turned to him, it was with her usual smile.

“It’s only that I would like to have you—­and—­and Martin—­and Cherry, as happy as I am!” she said, quickly.  And a second later the mood was gone as she turned the car in at the home gate and exclaimed, “There’s Cherry now!”

There was Cherry; Peter’s heart gave a leap at the sight of her.  Just a woman’s slender figure, half obscured by blowing lines of fresh, dry linen, just white arms, where the snowy frill of her gown fell back, and blue eyes under bright, loose, corn-coloured hair, but Peter could see nothing else in all the world.

“Martin’s somewhere about,” Cherry said, as Peter joined her, and Alix stopped the car within conversational range.  “I was passing these, and I thought I’d help the boy get his clothes in.”