“What’s the matter?” Martin demanded.

“Nothing special,” Cherry assured him, her eyes suddenly watering.  “Only I’m tired of it all.  I’m tired of pretending.  I can’t argue about it.  But I know it’s the wise thing to do.”

“You acted this same way before,” Martin suggested, after looking back at his paper for a few seconds.

“I did not!” Cherry said, indignantly.  “That is not true.”

“You’d go back to your father, I suppose?” Martin said, yawning.

“Until I could get into something,” Cherry replied with dignity.  A vague thought of the stage flitted through her mind.

“Oh!” Martin said, politely.  “And I suppose you think your father would agree to this delightful arrangement?” he asked.

“I know he would!” Cherry answered, eagerly.

“All right—­you write and ask him!” Martin agreed, good-naturedly.  Cherry was surprised at his attitude, but grateful more than surprised.

“Not cross, Mart?” she asked.

“Not the least in the world!” he answered, lightly.

“Because I truly believe that we’d both be happier—­” the woman said, hesitatingly.  Martin did not answer.

The next day she sat down to write her father.  The house was still.  Red Creek was awakening in the heavenly October coolness, children chattered on the way to school, the morning and evening were crisp and sharp.

Cherry stared out at a field of stubble bathed in soft sunshine.  The hills to-day were only a shade deeper than the pale sky.  Along the road back of the house a lumber wagon rattled, the thin bay horses galloping joyously in harness.  Pink and white cosmos, pallid on clouds of frail, bushy green, were banked in the shade of the woodshed.

She meditated, with a troubled brow.  Her letter was unexpectedly hard to compose.  She could not take a bright and simple tone, asking her father to rejoice in her home-coming.  Somehow the matter persisted in growing heavy, and the words twisted themselves about into ugly and selfish sounds.  Cherry was young, but even to her youth the phrases, the “misunderstood” and the “uncongenial,” the “friendly parting before any bitterness creeps in,” and the “free to decide our lives in some happier and wiser way,” rang false.  Pauline had been divorced, a few years ago, and the only thing Cherry disliked in her friend was her cold and resentful references to her first husband.

No, she couldn’t be a divorced woman.  It was all spoiled, the innocent past and the future; there was no way out!  She gave up the attempt at a letter, and began to annoy Martin with talk of a visit home again.

“You were there six months ago!” Martin reminded her.

“Eight months ago, Mart.”

“What you want to go for?”

“Oh, just—­just—­” Cherry’s irrepressible tears angered herself almost as much as they did Martin.  “I think they’d like me to!” she faltered.