Looking down at the cabin, the years slipped past him like a flying film, and it was the present again, and Alix—­Alix was gone.

He roused himself, spoke to the dog, and they went on their way again.  Mud squelched beneath Peter’s boots in the roadway; the dog sprang lightly from clump to clump of dried grass.  But when they left the road, and cut straight across the rise of the hillside, the ground was firmer, and the two figures moved swiftly through the dark night.  The early stars came out, and showed them, silhouetted against the sky above Alix’s beloved Tamalpais, the man’s erect form with its slight limp, the dog following faithfully, his plumy tail and feathered ruff showing a dull lustre in the starlight.

Cherry, with her violet eyes and corn-coloured hair, Cherry, with her little hands gathered in his, and her heart beating against his heart, and Alix, his chum, his companion, his comrade on so many night walks under the stars—­he had lost them both.  But it was Alix who was closest to his thoughts to-night, Alix, the thought of whom was gradually gripping his heart and soul with a new pain.

Alix was his own; Cherry had never been his own.  It was for him to comfort Cherry, it had always been his mission to comfort Cherry, since the days of her broken dolls and cut fingers.  But Alix was his own comforter, and Alix might have been laughing and stumbling and chattering beside him here, in the dark, wet woods, full of a child’s happy satisfaction in the moment and confidence in the morrow.

“Alix, my wife!” he said softly, aloud.  “I loved Cherry—­always.  But you were mine—­you were mine.  We belonged to each other—­for better and for worse—­and I have let you go!”

He went on and on and on.  They were plunging down hill now, under the trees.  He would see a light after awhile, and sleep for a few hours, and have a hunter’s breakfast, and be gone again.  And he knew that for weeks—­for months—­perhaps for years, he would wander so, through the great mountains, with their snow and their forests, over the seas, in strange cities and stranger solitudes.  Always alone, always moving, always remembering.  That would be his life.  And some day—­some day perhaps he would come back to the valley she had loved—­

But even now he recoiled in distaste from that hour.  To see the familiar faces, to come up to the cabin again, to touch the music and the books—­

Worse, to find Cherry a little older, happy and busy in her life of sacrifice, not needing him, not very much wanting the reminder of the old tragic times—­

An owl cried in the woods; the mournful sound floated and drifted away into utter silence.  Some small animal, meeting the death its brief life had evaded a hundred times, screamed shrilly, and was silent.  Great branches, stirred by the night wind, moved high above his head, and when there was utter silence, Peter could hear the steady, soft rush of the ocean, dulled here to the sound of gigantic, quiet breathing.