above the vista of Market Street. He seemed floating rather than
walking, and when, at crossings, he could help Cherry for a few
steps, felicity swelled in his soul almost like pain.

They met Alix on the boat, but she did not ask any embarrassing
questions; she sat between them on the upper deck, blinking
contentedly at the blue satin bay, her eyes following the wheeling
gulls or the passage of ships, her mind evidently concerned only
with the idle pleasantness of the moment. And always, for Peter,
there was the same joyous sense of something new--something
significant--something ecstatic in life.

From that hour he was never quite at ease in Cherry's company, and
avoided being alone with her even for an instant, although her
presence always caused him the new and tingling delight. He read
her honest blue eyes truly, and knew that although, like himself,
she was conscious of the new sweetness and brightness of life, she
had never entertained for an instant the flitting thought that it
was Peter's feeling for her that made it so. She thought perhaps
that it was the old childish happiness that she had known in the
valley, the freedom and leisure and irresponsibility of the old
days.

One day she made Alix and Peter laugh by reciting for them long
passages from "Paolo and Francesca." They were walking, and had
stopped to rest and get breath on a steep climb. Cherry's tender
voice, half-amusedly and half-seriously repeating the passionate
lines, lingered in Peter's mind like a sort of faint incense for
hours.