"So this is the thing that was waiting for us all these years, Cherry, ever since the time you and Alix used to dam my brook and climb my oak trees!" "I never dreamed of it!" Cherry said, with wonder in her tone. "If we had dreamed of it--" Peter began, and stopped. "Ah, if we had, it would all be different," Cherry said, with a look of pain. "That's the one thing I can't bear to think of!" "What is?" he asked, watching the lovely face that was only dimly visible in the moonlight. "Oh, that it all might have been so simple--so easy and right!" the girl answered. "That we might have been so happy instead of so sad--" "It makes you sad, dear?" "Peter, how could it make me anything else? Why, what can come of it?" Cherry asked, sorrowfully. "I cannot stay on here, now. I cannot--" She freed herself from his arms, and walked away from him restlessly through the moonshine, twisting her arms above her head. "I cannot go back to Martin!" he heard her whisper, in an agony. "I can't leave you--I can't leave you!" "Shall we go away?" Peter asked, simply, when she stopped at the great stone that Alix, for the view it commanded, had christened Sunrise Rock. Cherry dropped down upon it, facing away from him across the soft green luminous light of the valley. "Go where?" she asked. "Go anywhere!" he answered. "We have money enough; we can leave Alix rich--she will still have her cabin and her dogs and the life she loves. But there are other tiny places, Cherry; there are little cabins in Hawaii, there are Canadian villages--Cherry, there are thousands of places in the south of France where we might live for years and never be questioned, and never be annoyed." "France!" she whispered, and the downcast face he was watching so eagerly was thoughtful. "How could we go," she breathed. "You first, and then I? To meet somewhere?" "We would have to go together," he decided, swiftly. "Everyone must know, dear; you realize that?" Wide-eyed, she was staring at him as if spellbound by some new hope; now she shrugged her shoulders in careless disdain. "That isn't of any consequence!" "You don't feel it so!" He sat down beside her, and again they locked hands. "Not that part," she answered, simply. "I mind--Alix," she added, thoughtfully. "Yes, I mind Alix!" he admitted. "But the injury is done to Alix now," Cherry said, slowly. "Now it is too late to go back! You and I couldn't--we couldn't deceive Alix here, Peter," Cherry added, and as she turned to him he saw her thin white blouse move suddenly with the quick rising of her heart. "That--that would be too horrible! But I could take this love of ours away, leave everything else behind, simply--simply recognize," stammered Cherry, her lips beginning to tremble, "that it is bigger than ourselves, that we can't help it, Peter. I'd fight it if I could," she added, piteously, "I'd go away if I didn't know that no power on earth could keep me from coming back!"