Withal it was necessary that he should go to Arriba County, follow up his campaign of the preceding fall, arrange a timber sale if possible so that he might buy land, and above all see that his sheep herds were properly tended. This was the crucial season in the sheep business. Like the other sheep owners, he ranged his herds chiefly over the public domain, and he gambled on the weather. If the rain continued into the early summer so that the waterholes were filled and the grass was abundant, he would have a good lamb crop. The sale of part of this and of the wool he would shear would make up the bulk of his income for the year. And he had already spent that income and a little more. He could not afford a bad year. If it was a dry spring, so that lambs and ewes died, he would be seriously embarrassed. In any case, he was determined to be on the range in person and not to trust the herders. If it came to the worst and the spring was dry he would rent mountain range from the Forest Service and rush his herds to the upland pastures as early as possible. He was not at all distressed or worried; he knew what he was about and had an appetite for the work. One morning when he was in the midst of his preparations, he went to his office and found on the desk a small square letter addressed in a round, upright, hand. This letter affected him as though it had been some blossom that filled the room with a fragrant narcotic exhalation. It quickened the beat of his heart like a drug. It drove thought of everything else out of his mind. He opened it and the faint perfume of it flowed over him and possessed his senses and his imagination.… It was a long, gossipy letter and told him of nearly everything that Julia had done in the six months since they had parted “forever”. The salient fact was that she had been married. A young man in a New York brokerage office who had long been a suitor for her hand, and to whom she had once before been engaged for part of a summer, had followed the Roths to Europe and he and Julia had been married immediately after their return. “I give you my word, I don’t know why I did it,” she wrote. “Mother wanted me to, and I just sort of drifted into it. First thing I knew I was engaged and the next thing mother was sending the invitations out, and then I was in for it. It was a good deal of fun being engaged, but when it came to being married I was scared to death and couldn’t lift my voice above a whisper. Since then it has been rather a bore. Now my husband has been called to London. I am living alone here in this hotel. That is, more or less alone. A frightful lot of people come around and bore me, and I have to go out a good deal. I’m supposed to be looking for an apartment, too; but I haven’t really started yet. Ralph won’t be back for another two or three weeks, so I have plenty of time.