She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly. Nelly was bending down and flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief. When she stood up, she looked straight at Marise. Under the thick-springing, smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue as precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always seemed so inscrutable to the other woman.

She held out an armful of flowers. "I thought you'd like the white phlox the best. I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered Mrs. Bayweather said white is best at such times."

Marise drew a long breath. What superb self-control!

"Were the biscuits good?" asked Nelly, turning to Agnes. "I was afraid afterward maybe they weren't baked enough."

Marise was swept to her feet. If Nelly could master her nerves like that, she could do better herself. She took the flowers, carried them to the kitchen, and set them in a panful of water. She had not yet looked at 'Gene.

She went to find an umbrella to shield her hatless head from the sun, and on her way out only, cast a swift glance at 'Gene. That was enough.

All the blazing, dusty way to the mill, she saw hanging terribly before her that haggard ashy face.

At the mill, she paused in the doorway of the lower office, looking in on the three desk-workers, tapping on their machines, leaning sideways to consult note-books. The young war-cripple, Neale's special protege, seeing her, got to his feet to ask her what he could do for her.

Marise considered him for a moment before she answered. _Was_ there anything he could do for her? Why had she come? All she could remember for the moment was that singular contraction of her throat, which had come back now.

Then she remembered, "Is Mr. Crittenden here?"

"No, he was called away for the day, urgent business in New Hampshire."

Marise looked about her helplessly. "May I sit down for a moment?"

The young stenographer ran, limping and eager, to offer her a chair, and then, shyly, swung his swivel chair towards her, not wishing to go back to his work, uncertain what to say to his employer's wife.

"When will Mr. Crittenden be back?" asked Marise, although she knew the answer.

"No later than tonight, he said," answered the stenographer. "He spoke particularly about coming back because of Miss Hetty Allen's funeral."

"Yes, of course," said Marise.

There was nothing more to be said, she knew that, nothing more to be done, until Neale came back. But it seemed physically impossible for her to live until then, with the clutch in her throat.

She ought to get up now, at once, and go back to Cousin Hetty's. The Powers were waiting for her return. But her consternation at finding Neale really gone was a blow from which she needed a breathing time to recover. She couldn't have it so. She could never endure a whole day with this possibility like a threatening powder-mine under her feet, ready to go off and bring her inner world to ruin and despair. She put her hand out to take her umbrella and struggled up.

"Any message to leave for Mr. Crittenden?" asked the stenographer, seeing her ready to go.

She shook her head. Her eye fell on the waste-paper basket beside the desk. On one of the empty envelopes, torn in two, the words, "Return to C.K. Lowder," stood out clearly. She turned away and stood motionless, one hand at her temple. She was thinking to herself, "This is simply incredible. There is some monstrous mistake. If I could only think of a way to find it out before it kills me."

She became aware that the young cripple was looking at her anxiously, and saw in his startled, agitated face a reflection of what hers must be. She made an effort to speak quietly, and heard herself say, "Do you happen to remember if Mr. Crittenden was alone as he drove away?"

"Oh no," said the other. "He had had someone with him ever since the afternoon train came in yesterday. Mr. Crittenden drove the car in himself to the Ashley station to meet him. Somebody here on business."

"What sort of a man, do you remember?" asked Marise.

"Well, a clean-shaven man, with a queer thin long mouth, like the pictures of William Jennings Bryan's. And he talked out of one corner of it, the way ... see here, Mrs. Crittenden, you look awfully tired.

Wouldn't you better sit down and rest a moment more?"

Marise shook her head with an impatient gesture. Now she needed to get away from that office as much as she had wished to go to it. The place was hateful to her. The young man's eyes were intolerable. He was one of the people, one of the many, many people who had grown up trusting in Neale.

She swung suddenly to a furious incredulity about the whole thing. It was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all these people saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy ... ? She would never forgive them for trying to do such an infamous thing. They were trying to make her believe that Neale had been back of Lowder in the low-down swindle that had been practised on the Powers. They were trying to make her believe that for seven years Neale had been lying to her with every breath he drew. Because other men could lie, they thought they could make her believe that Neale did. Because other women's husbands had done base things in business, they thought she would be capable of believing that about Neale. They didn't know how preposterous it was, how close she and Neale had always been, how deeply a part of the whole aspect of life to her, Neale's att.i.tude toward his work had become. Those people did not realize what they were trying to make her believe, it was not only that her husband had been the instigator of a mean little cheat which had cost years of suffering to helpless neighbors, it was the total destruction of all that she had thought Neale to be ... _thought_ him? Known him to be.

"I must get back at once," she said, with a resentful accent and moved towards the door.

CHAPTER XXIII

MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS

July 22.

She pa.s.sed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun, her feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along the dusty road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers, march, march, came ... first what Eugenia had said, the advance from that to Mrs.

Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's, to the name on the envelope ... and then like the door to a white-hot blast-furnace thrown open in her face, came the searing conception of the possibility that it might be true, and all the world lost.

The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce incapacity to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one from another with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she had been dreaming.

It was all preposterous!

The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and there pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the beginning ...

what Eugenia had said, had said that _Neale had told her_ ... what Mrs.

Powers had said, "Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing" ...

what the stenographer had said ... the name on the envelope ...

_suppose it should be true_.

She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's voices sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on, Nelly, we better be going. There's all the work to do."

Marise went in and sat down, looking at them with stony indifference, at 'Gene this time as well as at the women. The drawn sickness of his ashy face did not move her in the least now. What did she care what he did, what anyone did, till she knew whether she had ever had Neale or not?

The women's chatter sounded remote and foolish in her ears.

If Neale had done that ... if that was the man he was ... but of course it was preposterous, and she had been dreaming. What was that that Eugenia had said? The descent into h.e.l.l began again step by step.

The Powers went out, the old woman still talking, chattering, as if anything mattered now.

After they were gone, Agnes ran to the door calling, "Mis' Powers! You forgot your pan and towel after all!" And there was Mrs. Powers again, talking, talking.

She had been saying something that needed an answer apparently, for now she stood waiting, expectant.

"What was that, Mrs. Powers? I was thinking of something else."

"I was just tellin' you that there's going to be a big change over to our house. 'Gene, he told Nelly, as he was setting here waiting for you, how he was going to cut down the big pine one of these days, like she always wanted him to. You know, the one that shades the house so.

'Gene's grandfather planted it, and he's always set the greatest store by it. Used to say he'd just as soon cut his grandmother's throat as chop it down. But Nelly, she's all housekeeper and she never did like the musty way the shade makes our best room smell. I never thought to see the day 'Gene would give in to her about that. He's gi'n in to her about everything else though. Only last night he was tellin' her, he was going to take something out'n the savings-bank and buy her an organ for Addie to learn to play on, that Nelly always hankered after. Seems 'sthough he can't do enough for Nelly, don't it?"

Marise looked at her coldly, incapable of paying enough attention to her to make any comment on what she said. Let them cut down all the trees in the valley, and each other's throats into the bargain, if Neale had ...

if there had never been her Neale, the Neale she thought she had been living with, all these years.

Mrs. Powers had gone finally, and the house was silent at last, so silent that she could now hear quite clearly, as though Eugenia still sat there, what the sweet musical voice was saying over and over. Why had they gone away and left her alone to face this deadly peril which advanced on her step by step without mercy, time after time? Now there was nothing to do but to wait and stand it off.