But not today.  Today she was only the bearer of the good tidings to Nelly and ’Gene, tidings which would wipe out for her the recollection of a day which was shameful to her, the day when she had conceived the possibility of believing some thing base against Neale.  It was not that she had believed it,—­no, she had stood it off till Neale came back.  But there was shame for her in those recurrent spasms of horror when she had conceived the possibility that she might believe it.  There had been proof of it, of course, Eugenia’s positive statement . . . strange how Eugenia could have so entirely misunderstood the affair! . . .  But what was mere proof against human certainty?  No, she had been attacked suddenly and for an instant had failed to rise to defend what was hers to defend.  It was a failure to live down.

She stood up and moved forward along the path, changing the thick envelope in one hand to the other.  She had already lost time.  She ought to have been by this time through the forest and out in the edge of the Powers pasture.

She became aware that for some time she had heard a distant sound, a faint toc-toc-toc, like the sound of chopping.  This being associated in her mind with snow and winter woods, she had not thought it could be the sound of the axe which it seemed to be.  Nobody could be felling trees in the height of the farming season, and on this day of swooning heat.  But as she came to the edge of the woods and turned into the path along the brook, she heard it more plainly, unmistakable this time, not far now, the ringing blows delivered with the power and rhythmic stroke of the trained chopper.  It came not from the woods at all, she now perceived, but from the open farming land, from the other side of the pasture, beyond the Powers house.

But there were no woods there, only the Powers’ big pine which towered up, darkly glorious, into the shimmering summer haze.

As she looked at it wondering, it came into her mind had somebody told her, or had she overheard it somewhere? . . . that ’Gene had promised Nelly at last to cut down the big pine he and his fathers had so cherished.

Could it be that?  What a sacrifice!  And to a foolish whim of Nelly’s.  There had been no musty smell in the house till Nelly came there to keep the shutters closed so that the sun would not fade the carpets.  The old pine was one of the most splendid things of beauty in the valley.  And it was something vital in ’Gene’s strange, choked, inarticulate life.  She stopped to listen a moment, feeling a chill of apprehension and foreboding.  It was dreadful to have ’Gene do that.  It was as though he were cutting at his own strength, cutting off one of his own members to please his wife.  Poor ’Gene!  He would do that too, now, if Nelly asked him.