"Not--not in the way you mean--" she answered, glad to be
discussing the topic.

"H'm," Peter muttered. It was almost as if he were disappointed.

"But, Peter," Cherry went on hesitatingly, appealingly, "it is no
more a marriage than if we both had--had done everything and
anything! He doesn't--oh, love!" Cherry interrupted herself
scornfully on the word. "Of COURSE he doesn't love me," she said.
"But it isn't only that, it's that we differ in every way about
everything! His friends, his ideas, his feelings about things--I
can't tell you how we jar and jar on each other! No," said Cherry,
beginning to cry a little, "he hasn't been unfaithful; I almost
wish he had--"

"Cherry!" Alix protested, with affectionate reproach.

"Alix," the little sister pleaded, eagerly, "you don't know what
it is--you don't know what it is! Always meeting people I don't
like, always living in places I hate, always feeling that my own
self is being smothered and lost and shrunk, always listening to
Mart complaining and criticizing people---"

"Don't appeal to Alix!" Peter said. "She doesn't care what she
does or where she lives. She fraternized with every old maid
school teacher on the steamer, and a booze-fiend, and a woman
whose husband was a native of Borneo; and she would pick out the
filthiest lairs in Honolulu and ask me if it wouldn't be fun to
live there!"