"No; never again!" she told him. "I've been thinking about it, all these days, and I've come to see what is right, as I never did before. Alix never knew about us, Peter--and that's been the one thing for which I could be thankful in all this time! But Alix had only one hope for me, and that was that somehow Martin and I would come to be--well, to be nearer to each other, and that somehow he and I would make a success of our marriage, would spare--well, let's say the family name, from all the disgrace and publicity of a divorce--" "And you feel that this has drawn you and Martin nearer together?" Peter asked, in a simple, expressionless voice, as she paused. "Well--he needs me now." "But, Cherry, my child--" Peter expostulated. "You cannot sacrifice all your life to the fancy that no one else can take your place with him--" "That," she said, steadily, "is just what I must do!" Peter looked at her for a few seconds without speaking. "You don't love him," he said. "No," she admitted, gravely. "I don't love him--not in the way you mean." "He is nothing to you," Peter argued. "As a matter of fact, it never was what a marriage should be. It was always--always--a mistake." "Yes," she conceded, sadly, "it was always a mistake!" "Then there is nothing to bind you to him!" Peter added. "No--and there isn't Alix to distress now!" she agreed, thoughtfully. "And yet," she went on, suddenly, "I do this more for Alix than for any one!" Peter looked at her in silence, looked back at the last flicker of the fire. "You will change your mind after awhile!" he said. Cherry rose from the chair, and stood with dropped head and troubled eyes, looking down at the flame. "No, I shall never change my mind!" she said, in a low tone that was still strangely firm and final for her. "I have thought about it, about the sacrifices I shall have to make, and about what my life will be as the years go on! And I know that I never will change. This is as much my life as it would be my life if you and I were alone in that little French village somewhere. There would be no going back then, no thinking of what might have been; there is no going back now. This is my life, that's all! For five or ten or twenty or thirty years I shall always be where Martin is, caring for him, amusing him, making a life for him." And Cherry raised her glorious blue eyes in which there was a pure and an uplifted look that Peter had never seen there before. "It is what Dad and Alix would have wished," she finished, solemnly, "and I do it for them!" Peter did not answer; and after a moment she went quietly and quickly from the room, with the new air of quiet responsibility that she had worn ever since the accident. CHAPTER XXIV