Peter’s brief shout of laughter rang out.

“The awful thing about that female is that it is true,” he told Cherry.  “If I ever stray from the path of virtue, she’ll scare me to death.”

“Sometimes I think your marriage is as—­as queer as my own,” Cherry said, looking from one to the other.

Nothing more was said for several days upon the subject of a possible divorce.  The weather continued perfect, and the little house-party on the mountaintop was complete in itself.  Cherry often went into the village with Alix, to be sure; once they all went to a charity affair at Blithedale; sometimes a few women drove up the winding road in the afternoon, and there were ginger-ale and cookies on the porch; but most of the time the two sisters were alone, with Peter joining them in the afternoons.

One afternoon Peter crossed the porch, tired and hot, and found everything apparently deserted.  He dropped into a chair, and was still breathless from the rapid climb up-hill, when stray notes from the piano reached his ears; a chord, a carefully played bit of bass; then a chord again.  Then slowly, but with dainty accuracy and even feeling, Cherry began to play a strange little study of Schumann.  Peter knew that it was Cherry, because Alix’s touch was always firm and sure; more than that, he himself had played this same bit no longer ago than last night, and he remembered now that Cherry had asked him just what it was.

He experienced a sudden and pleasing emotion; he did not stop to analyze it.  But he had been ruffled in spirit a moment before; Alix had known he was to come on this train, and had not met him with the car, and while he really did not mind the walk up, he disliked the feeling that they had entirely forgotten him.

The car was gone from its usual stand under a live oak, but everybody had not forgotten him nevertheless.  Cherry was deliberately recalling the mood and moment that also recalled him.  And as the notes came slowly, but precisely, from the cool, darkened living room, with its fragrant masses of sweet peas and fluted Martha Washington geraniums, Peter felt contented and serene.  He looked up at the rise of Tamalpais, only half a tone darker than the pale blue sky to-day; he looked off at the range toward the ocean, where shimmers of heat were quivering upward; and then he settled himself back luxuriously in his great wicker chair and shut his eyes.  Still the plaintive air came, as caressing as a touch.

Presently there was silence; then Cherry tried another little study, and finished it, and the hot summer stillness reigned again.  The valley swam under a haze of pure heat; a buzzard hung motionless over the cabin, and the dry air was sweet with resinous scent of pines and manzanita and even of tarweed.

With a sense that he had been dozing, if only for a few minutes, Peter opened his eyes.  Framed in the cabin doorway, poised like a butterfly against the dark background of the room, stood Cherry.  He knew that she had been standing so for some time, for a full minute, perhaps more.