Alix, after watching her for a troubled minute, went to her, and put her arm about her. "Don't cry, Cherry!" she pleaded, sorrowfully.
Cherry, regaining self-control, resumed her work silently, with an occasional, sudden sigh. Alix, clapping the heavy covers of a leatherbound volume in Buck's inquisitive nose, presently laughed gaily as he sneezed and pawed.
She had opened the subject with reluctance; now she realized that they had again reached a blank wall.
Three days after their talk in the moonlit garden Peter found chance to speak alone to Cherry.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Quite!" she said, raising blue eyes to his.
"What about your suitcase?"
"I took it into San Francisco yesterday; Alix went in early, and I followed at noon. It's checked in the ferry building, waiting."
"It's to-morrow then, Cherry!" he said.
"To-morrow!" He saw the colour ebb from her face as she echoed him. This was already late afternoon; perhaps her thoughts raced ahead to to-morrow afternoon at this time when they two would be leaning on the rail of the little steamer, gazing out over the smooth, boundless blue of the Pacific, and alone in the world.