ront me with kindness, that I was a good
deal like an Indian's dog which neither looks for kindness nor
understands it. He laughed a trifle bitterly at that and reminded me,
as he stood staring at me, of a Pribilof seal staring into an Arctic
sun. Then he said an odd thing. "I wish I could make it a bit easier
for you," he remarked as impersonally as though he were meditating
aloud.

I asked him why he said that. He evasively explained that he thought
it was because I had what the Romans called _constantia_. So I asked
him to explain _constantia_. And he said, with a shrug, that we might
regard it as firm consideration of a question before acting on it. I
explained, at that, that it wasn't a matter of choice, but of
character. He was willing to acknowledge that I was right. But before
that altogether unsatisfactory little debate was over Peter made me
promise him one thing. He has made me promise that before I leave we
have a tramp over the prairie together. And we have agreed that Sunday
would be as good a day as any.

_Saturday the Twenty-Fifth_

I have sent word to Duncan to expect me in Calgary as soon as I can
get things ready. My decision is made. And it is final. Two ghostly
hands have reached out and turned me toward my husband. One is the
Past. The other is the Proprieties. If life out here were a little
more like the diamond-dyed Westerns, Peter Ketley and Duncan McKail
would fight with hammerless Colts, the victor would throw me over the
horn of his saddle, and vanish in a cloud of dust, while Struthers was
turning Casa Grande into a faro-hall and my two kiddies were busy
holding up the Elk Crossing stage-coach.

But life, alas, isn't so dramatic as we dream it. It cross-hobbles us
and hog-ties us and leaves us afraid of our own wilted impulses. I
have a terror of failure. And it's plain enough I have only one
mission on God's green footstool. I'm a home-maker, and nothing more.
I'm a home-maker confronted by the last chance to make good at my one
and only calling. And whatever it costs, I'm going to make my husband
recognize me as a patient and long-suffering Penelope....

But enough of the rue! To-morrow I'm going snow-shoeing with Peter.
I'm praying that the weather will be propitious. I want one of our
sparkling-burgundy days with the sun shining bright and a nip in the
air like a stiletto buried in rose leaves. For it may be the last time
in all my life I shall walk on the prairie with my f