"Tired?" he asked, in an unnatural voice.
"I--I was just going to bed," she answered, hesitatingly. But she sat down, nevertheless; sank comfortably into the chair opposite his own, and stretched her little feet, crossed at the ankle, before her, as if she were indeed tired. "I don't know what should make me--always--so weary!" she said, smiling. "I don't do a thing, really, all day!"
Utterly relaxed, her small figure in its plain black gown, with the childish white she always wore at collar and wrist, looked like the figure of a child. Her golden hair shone with a dull gleam in the dim light; there was a glint of firelight in her dropped lashes.
"Perhaps it's the nervous strain," Peter suggested. "Of course, you would feel that." There was a silence in which neither moved. Cherry did not even raise her eyelids, and Peter, standing with one arm on the mantel, looked down at her steadily. "Cherry," he said, suddenly, "are you and I going to talk to each other like that?"
A flood of colour rose in Cherry's pale face, and she gave him one appealing glance.
"I don't--I don't think I know what you mean, Peter!"
"Oh, yes; you do!" he said. He knelt down beside her chair, and gathered her cold hands into one of his own. "What are you and I going to do?" he asked.
She looked at him in terror.
"But all that is changed!" she said, quickly, fearfully.
"Why is it changed?" he countered. "I love you--I have always loved you, since the days long ago, in this very house! I can't stop it now. And you love me, Cherry!"