Peter took the doctor’s chair, keeping his concerned and sympathetic eyes upon her.

“He was well one day,” she said, simply, “and the next—­the next, he didn’t come downstairs, and Hong waited and waited—­and about nine o’clock I went up—­and he had fallen—­he had fallen—­”

She was in tears again and Peter put his hand out and covered hers and held it.  Their chairs were touching, and as he leaned forward, their faces might almost have touched, too.

“He must have been going to call someone,” said Alix, after a while, “they said he never suffered at all.  This was January, the last day, and Cherry got here that same night.  He knew us both toward morning.  And that—­that was all.  Cherry was here for two weeks.  Martin came and went—­”

“Where is Cherry now?” Peter interrupted.

“Back at Red Creek.”  Alix wiped her eyes.  “She hates it, but Martin had a good position there.  Poor Cherry, it made her ill.”

“Anne came?”

“Anne and Justin, of course.”  Peter could not understand Alix’s expression.  She fell silent, still holding his hand and looking at the fire.

He had not seen her for nearly six months; he had been all around the world; had found her gay, affectionate letters in London, in Athens, in Yokohama.  But for three months now he had been away from the reach of mails, roughing it on a friend’s hemp plantation in Borneo, and if she had written, the letter was as yet undelivered.  He looked at her with a great rush of admiration and affection.  She was not only a pretty and a clever woman; but, in her plain black, with this new aspect of gravity and dignity, and with new notes of pathos and appeal in her exquisite voice, he realized that she was an extremely charming woman.

More than that, she stood for home, for the dearly familiar and beloved things for which he had been so surprisingly homesick.  His mountain cabin and the old house in San Francisco on Pacific Avenue; she belonged to his memories of them both; she was the only woman in the world that he knew well.

Before he said good-bye to her, he had asked her to marry him.  He well remembered her look of bright and interested surprise.

“D’you mean to tell me you have forgotten your lady love of the hoop-skirts and ringlets?” she had demanded.

“She never wore ringlets and crinolines!” he had answered.

“Well, bustles and pleats, then?”

“No,” Peter had told her, frankly.  “I shall always love her, in a way.  But she is married; she never thinks of me.  And I like you so much, Alix; I like our music and cooking and tramps and reading—­ together.  Isn’t that a pretty good basis for marriage?”

“No!” Alix had answered, decidedly.  “Perhaps if I were madly in love with you I should say yes, and trust to little fingers to lead you gently, and so on—­”

He remembered ending the conversation in one of his quick moods of irritation against her.  If she couldn’t take anybody or anything seriously—­he had said.