"About our having been three hours at lunch last week?"
"Why--I don't know!" Peter said, smiling nervously.
She was silent, and they parted without any further reference to meeting for lunch. But every time he was summoned to the telephone Peter felt a thrill of expectation, and at noon his office swam suddenly before his eyes when the lovely voice was really addressing him. She was at the ferry, Cherry said; she had finished shopping, and was going home.
"That's fine!" Peter said, quite as he would have said it a month ago. But he was shaking as he went back to his work.
That night, when Alix had gone to bed, he entered the sitting room suddenly to find Cherry hunting for a book. She had dropped on one knee, the better to reach a low shelf, and was wholly absorbed in the volume she had chanced to open.
When she heard the door open she turned, and immediately became very pale. She did not speak as Peter came to stand beside her.
"Cherry--" he said in a whisper, his face close to hers. Neither spoke again for awhile. Cherry was breathing hard, Peter was conscious only of a wild whirling of brain and senses.
They remained so, their eyes fixed, their breath coming as if they had been running, for endless seconds.
"You remember the question you asked me this morning?" Peter said. "Do you remember? Do you remember?"
Cherry, her cold fingers still holding the place in the book she had been reading, went blindly to the fireplace.