"I'll go you!" Alix said, with spirit. But the game was rather a languid one, nevertheless, and when it was over they gathered yawning about the mantel, ready to disperse for the night.
"And to-morrow night we dine in town and go to the Orpheum?" Alix asked, for the plan had been suggested at dinner-time.
"I'll blow you girls to any show you like," Martin offered. He took out his big watch--Cherry remembered just how smoothly this watch always seemed to slip in and out of his pocket--and smiled at them. "Ten o'clock," he grinned. "I'll set up awhile longer, and have a look at the evening papers."
"Well--" Peter conceded. Cherry was shocked by the sudden chill and sternness of his face. Immediately, remarking that he was tired, he went to his room. Cherry, with only a general good-night, also disappeared, to find Alix arranging beds and pillows on their sleeping porch.
"Oh, Alix--I'm so worried--I'm so sick with worry!" Cherry whispered. Alix, sitting still in the circle of light thrown from the reading lamp light, over her bed, nodded, with a stricken face. "He won't listen to me," said Cherry. "He won't hear of a divorce!"
"I know!" Alix said, distressedly.
"But what shall I do--I can't go with him!" Cherry protested.
Alix was silent.
"What shall I do?" Cherry pleaded again.
"Why, I don't see what else you CAN do, but go with him!" Alix said, in a troubled voice. "I should think that no man would want his wife, knowing that she didn't want to be with him! And I should think that to leave you here, with enough money to live on, and your own old home, would suit him better than to drag you--" She sighed. "But if it doesn't," she finished, "of course it doesn't alter your obligation, in a way. You ARE his wife. 'For better or worse, for richer or poorer, till death---'"