“But where?” she asked, sympathetically.

“I don’t know.  I shall take Buck—­start off” toward the big mountains.  I’ll write you now and then, of course!  I’m going home, first!”

“Of course!” she answered.  “But you won’t stay in that lonely cabin all alone,” she added, almost timidly.

“No, I shan’t be there long!” he assured her, briefly.  “Everything’s finished up now.  I’m leaving Kow in charge, of course.  I’ll be back one of these days!”

“Just now,” Cherry mused, sadly, “perhaps it is best—­for you—­to get away!  Now that Martin is so much better,” she added, in a little burst.  “I do feel so sorry for you, Peter!  I know how you feel.  I shall miss her always, of course,” said Cherry, “but I have him.”

“I try not to think of her,” Peter said, flinging up his head.

“When you do,” Cherry said, earnestly, giving him more of her attention than had been usual, of late, “Here is something to think, Peter.  It’s this:  we have so much to be thankful for, because she never—­knew!  It was madness,” Cherry went on, eagerly, “sheer madness—­that is clear now.  I don’t try to explain it, because it’s all been washed away by the frightful thing that happened.  I’m different now; you’re different—­I don’t know how we ever thought we could—­

“But I forget all that,” she went on, after a moment of shamed thought.  “I don’t let myself think of it any more!  I was unhappy, I was overwrought; there’s no explanation for what I felt and said but that!  And, Peter, you know that if I was false in thought to Martin, he had been unkind to me, and he had—­” she paused, interrupted herself.  “But men are different, I suppose,” she mused.  There was a silence during which she looked at him anxiously, but the expression on his face did not alter, and he did not speak.

“And what I think we ought to be thankful for,” she resumed, “is that Alix would rather—­she would rather have it this way.  She told me that she would be heartbroken if there had been any actual separation between me and Martin, and how much worse that would have been—­what we planned, I mean.  She was spared that, and we were spared—­I see it now—­what would have ruined both our lives.  We were brought to our senses, and the awakening only came a little sooner than it would have come anyway!”

Peter had walked to the window, and was looking out at the shabby winter trees that were dripping rain, and at the beaten garden, where the drenched chrysanthemums had been bowed to the soaked earth.  A wet wind swished through the low, fanlike branches of the redwoods; the creek was rushing high and noisily.