ng back to Alabama Ranch! It sounds momentous,
and yet, I know in my heart, that it doesn't mean so very much. He
will sleep under the same roof with me as remote as though he were
reposing a thousand miles away. He will breakfast and go forth to his
work, and my thoughts will not be able to go with him. He will return
with the day's weariness in his bones, but a weariness which I can
neither fathom nor explain in my own will keep my blood from warming
at the sound of his voice through the door. Being still his wife, I
shall have to sew and mend and cook for him. _That_ is the penalty of
prairie life; there is no escape from propinquity.

But that life can go on in this way, indefinitely, is unthinkable.
What will happen, I don't know. But there will have to be a change,
somewhere. There will have to be a change, but I am too tired to worry
over what it will be. I'm too tired even to think of it. That's
something which lies in the lap of Time.

_Saturday the Twenty-fifth_

Dinky-Dunk is back. At least he sleeps and breakfasts at home, but the
rest of the time he is over at Casa Grande getting his crop cut. He's
too busy, I fancy, to pay much attention to our mutual lack of
attention. But the compact was made, and he seems willing to comply
with it. The only ones who fail to regard it are the children. I
hadn't counted on them. There are times, accordingly, when they
somewhat complicate the situation. It didn't take them long to get
re-acquainted with their daddy. I could see, from the first, that he
intended to be very considerate and kind with them, for I'm beginning
to realize that he gets a lot of fun out of the kiddies. Pee-Wee will
go to him, now, from anybody. He goes with an unmistakable expression
of "Us-men-have-got-to-stick-together" satisfaction on his little
face.

But Dinky-Dunk's intimacies, I'm glad to say, do not extend beyond the
children. Three days ago, though, he asked me about turning his hogs
in on my land. It doesn't sound disturbingly emotional. But if what's
left of my crop, of course, is any use to Duncan, he's welcome to
it....

I looked for that letter which I wrote to Dinky-Dunk several weeks
ago, looked for it for an hour and more this morning, but haven't
succeeded in finding it. I was sure that I'd put it between the pages
of the old ranch journal. But it's not there.

Last night before I turned in I read all of Meredith's _Modern Love_.
It was nice to