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 hell 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.