“If——­” Cherry said presently, “If I get my money I’ll have enough to live on, won’t I, Peter?”

“You’ll have about forty thousand dollars—­yes, at five per cent, you could live on that.  Especially if you lived here in the valley,” Peter answered, after some thought.

“Then I want you to know,” Cherry went on quietly, with sudden scarlet in her cheeks, “that I’m going to tell Martin I think we have tried it long enough!” Peter looked gravely at her, soberly nodded, and resumed his study of the fire.  But Alix spoke in brisk protest.

“Tried it!  You mean tried marriage!  But one doesn’t try marriage!  It’s a fact.  It’s like the colour of your eyes.”

“As a matter of fact, it isn’t anything of the kind,” Cherry said, mildly.

“Lloyd has given you cause, eh?” Peter took his pipe out of his mouth long enough to ask, briefly.

“Not—­not in the way you mean—­” she answered, glad to be discussing the topic.

“H’m,” Peter muttered.  It was almost as if he were disappointed.

“But, Peter,” Cherry went on hesitatingly, appealingly, “it is no more a marriage than if we both had—­had done everything and anything!  He doesn’t—­oh, love!” Cherry interrupted herself scornfully on the word.  “Of course he doesn’t love me,” she said.  “But it isn’t only that, it’s that we differ in every way about everything!  His friends, his ideas, his feelings about things—­I can’t tell you how we jar and jar on each other!  No,” said Cherry, beginning to cry a little, “he hasn’t been unfaithful; I almost wish he had—­”

“Cherry!” Alix protested, with affectionate reproach.

“Alix,” the little sister pleaded, eagerly, “you don’t know what it is—­you don’t know what it is!  Always meeting people I don’t like, always living in places I hate, always feeling that my own self is being smothered and lost and shrunk, always listening to Mart complaining and criticizing people—–­”

“Don’t appeal to Alix!” Peter said.  “She doesn’t care what she does or where she lives.  She fraternized with every old maid school teacher on the steamer, and a booze-fiend, and a woman whose husband was a native of Borneo; and she would pick out the filthiest lairs in Honolulu and ask me if it wouldn’t be fun to live there!”

They all laughed; then Peter added, seriously: 

“I’ll go this far, Cherry.  Lloyd married you too young.”

“Oh, far too young!” she agreed, quickly.  “The thing I—­I can’t think of,” she said, “is how young I was—­only a little girl.  I knew nothing; I wasn’t ready to be anybody’s wife!”

Something in the poignant sorrow of her tone went straight to their hearts, and for the first time Peter had an idea of the real suffering she had borne.  Alix’s mouth was rather firmly shut, her eyes a little narrowed, her face rather sad, as she looked into the fire.

“If I had a child, even, or if Martin needed me,” Cherry said, “then it might be different!  But I’m only a burden to him——­”