he writhed and moaned there in public, over the week-end.
Then possibly her cries of suffering might make her sisters see a
little more light. But the beaver, they tell me, is trapped under the
ice, always in running water. A mud-ball is placed a little above the
waiting trap, to leave the water opaque, and when the angry iron jaws
have snapped shut on their victim, that victim drowns, a prisoner.
Francois used to contend shruggingly that it was an easy death. It may
be easy compared with some of the other deaths imposed on his furry
captives. But it's not my idea of bliss, drowning under a foot or two
of ice with a steel trap mangling your ankle for full measure!

"We live forward, but we understand backward." I don't know who first
said it. But the older I grow the more I realize how true it is.

_Sunday the Umptieth_

I've written to Peter, reminding him of his promise, and asking about
the Pasadena bungalow.

It seems the one way out. I'm tired of living like an Alpine ibex, all
day long above the snow-line. I'm tired of this blind alley of
inaction. I'm tired of decisions deferred and threats evaded. I want to
get away to think things over, to step back and regain a perspective on
the over-smudged canvas of life.

To remain at Alabama Ranch during the winter can mean only a winter of
discontent and drifting--and drifting closer and closer to uncharted
rocky ledges. There's no ease for the mouth where one tooth aches, as
the Chinese say.

Dinky-Dunk, I think, has an inkling of how I feel. He is very
thoughtful and kind in small things, and sometimes looks at me with
the eyes of a boy's dog which has been forbidden to follow the village
gang a-field. And it's not that I dislike him, or that he grates on
me, or that I'm not thankful enough for the thousand and one little
kind things he does. But it's rubbing on the wrong side of the glass.
It can't bring back the past. My husband of to-day is not the
Dinky-Dunk I once knew and loved and laughed with. To go back to dogs,
it reminds me of Chinkie's St. Bernard, "Father Tom," whom Chinkie
petted and trained and loved almost to adoration. And when poor old
Father Tom was killed Chinkie in his madness insisted that a
taxidermist should stuff and mount that dead dog, which stood,
thereafter, not a quick and living companion but a rather gruesome
monument of a vanished friendship. It was, of course, the shape and
color of the thing he h