branches, and she thought of her father, with his mild voice and
ready smile; and some emotion, almost like fear, came over her.
For the first time she asked herself, in honest bewilderment, why
she had married.

The heat deepened and strengthened and increased as the burning
day wore on. Martin waked up, hot and headachy, and having further
distressed himself with strong coffee and eggs, departed into the
dusty, motionless furnace of out-of-doors. The far brown hills
shimmered and swam, the "Emmy Younger" looked its barest, its
ugliest, its least attractive self. Cherry moved slowly about the
kitchen; her head ached; it was a day of sickening odours. The ice
man had failed them again, the soup had soured, and after she had
thrown it away Cherry felt as if the grease and the smell of it
still clung to her fingers.

There was a shadow in the doorway; she looked up surprised. For a
minute the tall figure in striped linen and the smiling face under
the flowery hat seemed those of a stranger. Then Cherry cried out,
and laughed, and in another instant was crying in Alix's arms.

Alix cried, too, but it was with a great rush of pity and
tenderness for Cherry. Alix had not young love and novelty to
soften the outlines of the "Emmy Younger," and she felt, as she
frankly wrote later, to her father, "at last convinced that there
is a hell!" The heat and bareness and ugliness of the mine might
have been overlooked, but this poor little house of Cherry's, this
wood stove draining white ashes, this tin sink with its pump, and
the bathroom with neither faucets nor drain, almost bewildered
Alix with their discomfort.