“Missy no come!” Kow answered, unruffled.  “Him say no can come!”

“Cherry!” Peter shouted.  “Did Alix say she wasn’t coming to lunch?”

“N-n-not to me!” Cherry answered from the garden.  She came up to the porch, with her hands full of short-stemmed roses.

“Him go flend house,” Kow elucidated.  “Fiend heap sick!”

“Mrs. Garvin?” Cherry questioned.  “Did she stay at Mrs. Garvin’s for lunch?  Perhaps it’s the Garvin baby,” she added to Peter.  “She said she was going to stop in!”

“I’ll find out!” Peter was conscious that everything was beginning to tremble and thrill again, as he went to the telephone.  “Why, yes,” he said, coming back to the porch, “the baby arrived just before she got there, and they were all upset.  She’s in her glory, of course.  Says that she’ll be home to supper, even if she goes back!”

“Oh!” Cherry said, in a small voice.  She sat down at the table, and shook out her napkin.  Peter sat down, too, and, as usual, served.  Kow came and went, and a silence deepened and spread and grew more and more terrible every instant.

It was a Sunday, foggy and overcast, but not cold.  The vines about the porch were covered with tiny beads of moisture; among the bushes in the garden little scarfs and veils of fog were caught, and from far across the ridge the droning warning of the fog horn penetrated, at regular, brief intervals.

“Cherry,” Peter said, suddenly, when the silent meal was almost over, “will you talk about it?”

“Talk—?” she faltered.  Her voice thickened and stopped.  “Oh, I would rather not!” she whispered, with a frightened glance about.

“Listen, Cherry!” he said, following her to the wide porch rail, and standing behind her as she sat down upon it.  “I’m sorry!  I’m just as sorry as I can be.  But I can’t help it, Cherry.  And I would like—­I do think it would be wiser, just to—­to look the matter squarely in the face, and—­and perhaps discuss it for a few minutes, and then end it.”

She gave him a fleeting glance over her shoulder, but she did not go away.  Peter sat down behind her on the rail, and she turned to face him, although her troubled eyes were still averted.

“Cherry,” he said then, “I’m as surprised as you are—­I can’t tell you when it—­it all happened!  But it—­” Peter folded his arms across his chest, and with a grimly squared jaw looked off into the misty distance—­“it is there,” he finished.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Cherry whispered, on a breath of utter distress.  “I’m so sorry!  Oh, Peter, we never should have let it happen—­our caring for each other!—­we never should have allowed ourselves to think—­to dream—­of such a thing!  Oh, Peter, I’m so sick about it,” Cherry added, incoherently, with filling eyes.  “I’m just sick about it!  I know—­I know that Alix would never have permitted herself to—­I know she wouldn’t!”

He was close to her, and now he laid his hand over hers.