“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Alix said, puzzled.

“Your note!” Martin explained.

“What note!  I didn’t write any note.  Cherry telephoned—­”

“No,” he said, patiently and perfunctorily, “you wanted—­Cherry—­ to-say—­good-bye—­to—­those—­people—­who—­were—­sailing!  That was all.  She wrote it; it got there in time, I guess.  Anyway, I heard the girl say to rush it to the boat!”

“Oh!” Alix said.  “Oh—­” she added.  Her tone betrayed nothing, but she was thoroughly at sea.  “Did I ask Cherry to say good-bye to any one?” she asked herself, going back to the beginning of the long day.  Instinct warned her that nothing would be gained by sharing her perplexity with Martin.  “I give you my word that she hasn’t been five minutes alone with any one but Peter and me!” she said, frankly, looking into Martin’s eyes.  “Now, are you satisfied?”

“Sure, I’m satisfied!” he answered.  “She didn’t go into town to lunch with any one?” he asked.

“No!” Alix said, scornfully.  “She always lunches with us!  You don’t deserve her, to talk so about her, Martin!” she said.

“Well, I’m not anybody’s fool, you know!” he assured her.  “All right, I’ll take your say-so for it.  He yawned, “Trouble with Cherry is, she hasn’t enough to do!” he finished, sapiently.

“I’m a poor person with whom to discuss Cherry!” Alix hinted, with an unsmiling nod for good-night.

And she looked at Cherry’s corn-coloured head, ten minutes later, with a thrill of maternal protectiveness.  Cherry was evidently asleep, buried deep under the blue army blankets.  But Alix did not get to sleep that night.

She did not even undress.  For it was while sitting on the side of her bed, ready to begin the process, that through her excited and indignant and whirling thoughts the first suspicion shot like a touch of flame.

“How dares Martin—­how dares he!” her thoughts had run.  And then suddenly she had said:  “Why, she has seen no one but Peter—­she has seen no one but Peter!

“I’ll tell Peter all this when Martin has gone,” Alix decided.  “He’ll be furious—­he adores Cherry—­he’ll be furious—­he thinks that there is no one like Cherry—­”

The words she had said came back to her, and she said them again, half-aloud, with a look of pain and almost of fear suddenly coming into her eyes.

“Peter adores Cherry—­”

And then she knew.  Even while the sick suspicion formed itself, vague and menacing and horrible, in her heart, she knew the truth of it.  And though for hours she was to weigh it and measure it, to remember and question and compare all the days and hours that she and Peter and Cherry had been together; from the moment the thought was born she knew that it was to be with her as an accepted fact for all time to come.

CHAPTER XX

For a few seconds Alix felt ill, dazed, and shocked almost beyond enduring.  She sat immovable, her eyes fixed, her body held rigid, as a body might be in the second before it fell after a bullet had cleanly pierced the heart.