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 attitude 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 passed 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.