to sear her
whole soul with mockery. She was rubbing some lotion on her red, chapped
hands, hands defaced by work and cold. She had a picture of her hands as
they used to be--back there in those years when to have been free to
marry Stuart would have made life radiant. She sat a long time before
the fire, not wanting to go to bed. She particularly wanted to go to bed
alone that night. There seemed something shameful in that night sharing
a bed as a matter of expediency. Stuart was snoring a little. She sat
there, her face buried in her hands. The wind was beating against the
house. It was beating against the sheep out there, too--it had a clean
sweep against that outer rim of living things. She cried for a little
while; and then, so utterly tired that it did not matter much, she went
in the other room and crept into bed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

But at last the cold had let go of them. It was April, the snow had gone
and the air promised that even to that valley spring would come. Ruth,
out feeding the chickens, felt that spring nearness. She raised her face
gratefully to the breeze. It had seemed almost unbelievable that the
wind would ever again bring anything but blighting cold.

As she stood there, held by that first feel of spring, an automobile
came along, slowed, and Stuart went running out of the house to meet it.
It was his friend Stoddard, a real-estate man there. He had become
friends with this man in the last few months. He had had little in
friendships with men and this had brightened him amazingly. He had a new
interest in business things, new hopes. It had seemed to make him
younger, keener. He and Mr. Stoddard had a plan for going into Montana
where the latter was interested in a land developing company, and going
into business together. Stuart was alive with interest in it; it
promised new things for him, a new chance. They would live in a town,
and it would be business life, which he cared for as he had never come
to care for ranching. He was beginning to talk to Ruth about moving, of
selling off their stock and some of their things. He was eager to make
the change.

She had gone in the house as the machine stopped, having seen that there
were people in the car with Mr. Stoddard and not feeling presentably
dressed. She went upstairs to do the work and as she glanced down from
the upper window she saw Stuart in laughing conversation with a girl in
the automobile. Something about it arrested her