Cherry was silent a few minutes, and Peter smoked with his eyes on the fire. Alix glanced from one to the other, sighed, and glanced down at her magazine.
"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--"