The early spring in the Sierras is still winter. The great masses of snow yield only to the burning sun of summer, and the air is as sharp as a dagger so long as the snow lasts. Black cliffs, stern precipices and crevices holding cold and darkness bar out the spring and turn a stony face towards her caresses. So thought Alicia March, as in the wintry dusk she alighted from the train at the lonely mountain station. All around her was desolation. The dusk was at hand, but on the far-off horizon a pale green light still glowed upon the distant peaks. Below her lay the valleys, dark, sombre and mysterious, with here and there a light from some small homestead showing in the twilight, and a waving line of sheep, huddling together as they were driven towards the great sheepfold. The only house in sight upon the mountain side was an adobe hut upon a little plateau. It was surrounded by melancholy cedars and dark and bare-limbed ilex-trees. "Can you tell me," she said, going up to the station-master in his little box of an office, "where Mr. Roger March lives?" The station-master, a phlegmatic person in buckskin clothes, answered her by jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards the open door. "That’s his house," he said--"over there on the hill." His eyes fell upon Alicia, and his dull mind, as little subject to curiosity as interest, was suddenly moved. The expression of longing despair in her eyes penetrated him a little. He then surmised the question that Alicia would have asked but could not. "Mr. March is living, but in a pretty bad way, so my wife says; he is a heap better than we ever thought he would be. My wife goes there every day or two to look after him. He was mighty good to us when our shack was burnt." Alicia, without another word, went out and followed the rude path which led to the little adobe house. The station-master made no comment; he was accustomed to strange meetings and partings in his remote world. The night had fallen when Alicia found herself outside the ’door of the rude little house where Roger March had hidden his broken heart. Long ago the voice of protest within Alicia had been silenced. She would have fought and struggled to have gone to her husband. She stood trembling in the dusk outside, afraid to raise the latch. Close to her was an uncurtained window, through which the light of a fire gleamed. She stole towards the window and, looking in, saw Roger March for the first time since he had repudiated her. He sat in a rough wooden chair, drawn up to the wide, low fireplace; his face was white like that of a dead man, and his shrunken figure was almost lost in his clothes. His eyes alone appeared to have life in them as he gazed steadily at the fire. Sadness, hopelessness and humiliation were in his gaze, but he was still sentient, living, breathing.