"Shoot!" Martin said, with his favourite look of indulgent amusement.
But she knew the little twitch to his lips that was neither indulgent nor amused.
"There are marriages that without any fault on either side are a mistake," Cherry began, "any contributory fault, I mean--"
"Talk United States!" Martin growled, smiling, but on guard.
"Well, I think our marriage was one of those!" Cherry said.
"What have you got to kick about?" Martin asked, after a pause.
"I'm not kicking!" Cherry answered, with quick resentment. "But I wish I had words to make you realize how I feel about it!"
Martin looked gloomily up at her, and shrugged.
"This is a sweet welcome from your wife!" he observed. But as she regarded him with troubled and earnest eyes, perhaps her half-forgotten beauty made an unexpected appeal to him, for he turned toward her and eyed her with a large tolerance. "What's the matter, Cherry?" he asked. "It doesn't seem to me that you've got much to kick about. Haven't I always taken pretty good care of you? Didn't I take the house and move the things in; didn't I leave you a whole month, while I ate at that rotten boarding-house, when your father died; haven't I let you have--how long is it?--seven weeks, by George, with your sister?"
It poured out too readily to be unpremeditated; Cherry recognized the tones of his old arraigning voice. He had brooded over his grievances. He felt himself ill-treated.