A dream of ease and adoration and beauty came to her.  She did not visualize any special place, any special gown or hour or person.  But she saw her beauty fittingly environed; she saw cool rooms, darkened against this blazing midsummer glare; heard ice clinking against glass; the footsteps of attentive maids; the sound of cultivated voices, of music and laughter.  She had had these dreams before, but they were becoming habitual now.  She was so tired—­so sick—­so bored with her real life; it was becoming increasingly harder and harder for her to live with Martin; to endure and to struggle against the pricks.  She was always in a suppressed state of wanting to break out, to shout at him brazenly, “I don’t care if your coffee is weak!  I like it weak!  I don’t care if you don’t like my hat—­I do!  Stop talking about yourself!”

Various little mannerisms of his began seriously to annoy her; a rather grave symptom, had Cherry but known it.  He danced his big fingers on the handle of the sugar spoon at breakfast, sifting the sugar over his cereal; she had to turn her eyes resolutely away from the sight.  He blew his nose, folded his handkerchief, and then brushed his nose with it firmly left and right; she hated the little performance that was never altered.  He had a certain mental slowness, would blink at her politely and patiently when she flashed plans or hopes at him:  “I don’t follow you, my dear!” This made her frantic.

She was twenty, undisciplined and exacting.  She had no reserves within herself to which she could turn.  Bad things were hopelessly bad with Cherry, her despairs were the dark and tearful despairs of girlhood, prematurely transferred to graver matters.

Martin was quite right in some of his contentions; girl-like, she was spasmodic and unsystematic in her housekeeping; she had times of being discontented and selfish.  She hated economy and the need for careful managing.

In October Alix chanced to write her a long and unusually gossipy letter.  Alix had a new gown of black grenadine, and she had sung at an afternoon tea, and had evidently succeeded in her first venture.  Also they had had a mountain climb and enclosed were snapshots Peter had taken on the trip.

Cherry picked up the little kodak prints; there were four or five of them.  She studied them with a pang at her heart.  Alix in a loose rough coat, with her hair blowing in the wind, and the peaked crest of Tamalpais behind her—­Alix busy with lunch boxes—­ Alix standing on the old bridge down by the mill, A wave of homesickness swept over the younger sister; life tasted bitter.  She hated Alix, hated Peter, above all she hated herself.  She wanted to be there, in Mill Valley, free to play and to dream again—­

A day or two later she told Martin kindly and steadily that she thought it had all “been a mistake.”  She told him that she thought the only dignified thing to do was to part.  She liked him, she would always wish him well, but since the love had gone out of their relationship, surely it was only honest to end it.