They met Alix on the boat, but she did not ask any embarrassing questions; she sat between them on the upper deck, blinking contentedly at the blue satin bay, her eyes following the wheeling gulls or the passage of ships, her mind evidently concerned only with the idle pleasantness of the moment.  And always, for Peter, there was the same joyous sense of something new—­something significant—­something ecstatic in life.

From that hour he was never quite at ease in Cherry’s company, and avoided being alone with her even for an instant, although her presence always caused him the new and tingling delight.  He read her honest blue eyes truly, and knew that although, like himself, she was conscious of the new sweetness and brightness of life, she had never entertained for an instant the flitting thought that it was Peter’s feeling for her that made it so.  She thought perhaps that it was the old childish happiness that she had known in the valley, the freedom and leisure and irresponsibility of the old days.

One day she made Alix and Peter laugh by reciting for them long passages from “Paolo and Francesca.”  They were walking, and had stopped to rest and get breath on a steep climb.  Cherry’s tender voice, half-amusedly and half-seriously repeating the passionate lines, lingered in Peter’s mind like a sort of faint incense for hours.

“It’s lovely,” said Cherry in the garden that night, when he spoke to her about it, “but it’s not Shakespere, of course,” she surprised him by adding.  Cherry had developed, he thought, she had cared nothing for Shakespere years ago.  Immediately she began the immortal phrases: 

’Tis but the name that is mine enemy, Thou art thyself, though, not a Montague ... ...  And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself!

Peter’s heart began to thump again.  They were alone in the garden; it was dark to-night, warm and starry.

“Now that you and I are brother and sister,” Cherry said, after a silence, “tell me—­it went across my mind once, and then I didn’t think of it for years.  But tell me, was it me with whom you were—­ you fancied you were in love, all those years ago?”

She looked innocently up at him in the gloom, and laughed.  Peter did not speak for a few seconds.

“Yes, it was always you!” he said then, briefly.

Cherry laughed again, a little amused and exultant laugh.  But immediately she stopped laughing, and said, vexedly: 

“I was a fool to ask you that!  I don’t know why I did.  Just sheer egotism—­and I hate women who dwell on their own foolish old love affairs, too!”

Peter, as ashamed as she of the moment’s weakness, laughed, too.

“You could hardly call it that!” he objected, mildly.

“You could hardly call it anything!” she agreed, in relief.  “Does Alix know?” she asked, quickly.

“There wasn’t much to tell,” he reminded her, as they went back to the house through the ranks of wet wallflowers and roses.