Presently they were talking again, in that hunger for self-analysis that is a part of new love.  They thrilled at every word, Cherry raising her eyes, shining with eagerness, to his, or Peter watching the little down-dropped face in an agony of adoration.  An hour passed, two hours, after awhile they were walking, still with that strange sense of oneness and of solitude, and still as easily as if they had been floating, to the ferry.

Alix met them in Mill Valley with vivid accounts of the day; she had been pondering the brief talk with Anne, and was anxious to have Peter’s view of it.  Peter was of the opinion that Anne’s conduct indicated very clearly that she and Justin realized that their case was lost.

“Then you’re fixed for life, Cherry,” was Alix’s first remark.  “Oh, say!” she added, in a burst.  “Let’s go down to the old house to-morrow, will you?  Let’s see what it needs, and how much would have to be done to make it fit to live in!”

Cherry flushed, staring steadily at her sister, and Peter, too, was confused, but Alix saw nothing.  The next day she carried her point, and took them with her down to the old house.  It had stood empty since her marriage, for winter storms had gone hard with it, and the small rent it would have brought them through the summer months was not enough to warrant the expense of putting it in order.  It looked neglected and shabby; it was almost buried in the dry over-growth of the untended garden.  There was a drift of colourless leaves on the porch, the steps were deep in the dropped needles of the redwoods, the paths were quite lost to sight under a fine wash of winter mud, and the roses and lilacs were grown woody and wild.

Alix was suddenly silent, and Cherry was pale and fighting tears, as they crossed the porch, and fitted the key in the door.  Inside the house the air was close and stale, odorous of dry pine walls and of unaired rooms.  Peter flung up a window, the girls walked aimlessly about, through the familiar yet shockingly strange chairs and table that were all coated thickly with dust.  Somehow this dust gave Cherry a desolate sensation, it covered everything alike:  the spectacle case and the newspaper that still lay on her father’s desk; the cups and glasses that remained, face downward at the sink, from some last meal.  Her hands and Alix’s were speedily coated with it, too; they felt sad and unnatural here, in the house where they had spent so many years.

“It needs everything!” Alix said, after a first quick tour of inspection, eyeing a great weather streak on the raw plaster of the dining-room wall.  “It needs air, cleaning, straightening, flowers—–­Gosh, how it does need people!”

“I—­I can’t bear it!” Cherry said softly, in a sick undertone.

Alix, who was rapidly recovering her equilibrium, sprang upstairs without hearing her, but Cherry did not follow.  She went to the open front doorway and stood there, leaning against the sill, and gazing sadly out at the shabby, tangled garden that had sheltered all the safety and joy and innocence of her little girl days.