I grew rather bored, myself, by Santa Barbara, before the winter was out. Something more exotic, too, would have been good for Letitia. There was a little colony from my sister’s Holy Land, and in the evenings you could fancy yourself on Brattle Street. She had managed, even there, to befog herself in a New England atmosphere. I was sure it was bad for her throat. I won’t deny, either, that there was more than anxiety at the heart of my impatience. I could not get Filippo Upcher out of my head. After all, I had once seen much of him; and, even more than that, I had seen him act a hundred times. Any one who had seen him do Macbeth would know that Filippo Upcher could not commit a murder without afterthoughts, however little forethought there might have been in it. It was all very well for van Vreck to speculate on Filippo’s ancestry and suggest that the murder was a pretty case of atavism--holding the notion up to the light with his claret and smiling æsthetically. Upcher had had a father of sorts, and he wasn’t all Borgia--or housemaid. Evie never smirched her charming pages with the name of Upcher, and I was cut off from the _Orb_; but I felt sure that the San Francisco papers would announce the date of his execution in good time. I scanned them with positive fever. Nothing could rid me of the fantastic notion that there would be a terrible scene for Upcher on the other side of the grave; that death would but release him to Rachel Upcher’s Stygian fury. It seemed odd that he should not have preferred a disgusted jury to such a ghost before its ire was spent. The thought haunted me; and there was no one in Letitia’s so satisfactory circle to whom I could speak. I began to want the open; for the first time in my life, to desire the sound of unmodulated voices. Besides, Letitia’s régime was silly. I took drastic measures. It was before the blessed days of limousines, and one had to arrange a driving trip with care. Letitia behaved very well. She was really worried about her throat, and absurdly grateful to me for giving up my winter to it. I planned as comfortably as I could for her--even suggested that we should ask an acquaintance or two to join us. She preferred going alone with me, however, and I was glad. Just before we started, while I was still wrangling with would-be guides and drivers and sellers of horses, the news of Upcher’s execution came. If I could have suppressed that day’s newspapers in Santa Barbara, I should have done so, for, little as I had liked Filippo, I liked less hearing the comments of Letitia’s friends. They discussed the case, criminologically, through an interesting evening. It was quite scientific and intolerably silly. I hurried negotiations for the trip, and bought a horse or two rather recklessly. Anything, I felt, to get off. We drove away from the hotel, waving our hands to a trim group (just photographed) on the porch.