She took her bath before the fire in the living-room. Stuart had piled on one chair the clothes that he had taken off and would put on in the morning. She placed on another the things for herself. And suddenly she looked at those two chairs and the thing that she had been trying not to think about--that now they two could be married--seemed 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.