* * * * *

Nelly, . . . looking down suddenly to see where the tree would fall, crying out, “Oh, I left my hat where it’ll . . .” and darting, light as a feather, towards it.

’Gene, making a great futile gesture to stop her, as she passed him, shouting at her, with a horrified glance up at the slowly leaning tree, “Come back!  Come back!”

Nelly on the brush-pile, her hat in her hand, whirling to return, supple and swift, suddenly caught by the heel and flung headlong . . . up again in an instant, and falling again, to her knees this time.  Up once more with a desperate haste, writhing and pulling at her shoe, held by its high heel, deep between the knotty poles.

’Gene, bounding from his place of safety, there at her feet, tearing in a frenzy at the poles, at her shoe. . . .

Above them the great tree bearing down on them the solemn vengeful shadow of its fall.

Someone was screaming.  It was Nelly.  She was screaming, “’Gene!  ’Gene!  ’Gene!” her face shrunken in terror, her white lips open.

* * * * *

And then, that last gesture of ’Gene’s when he took Nelly into his great arms, closely, hiding her face on his shoulder, as the huge tree, roaring downward, bore them both to the earth, forever.

CHAPTER XXVIII

TWO GOOD-BYES

August 10.

Marise welcomed the bother about the details of Eugenia’s departure and Mr. Welles’, and flung herself into them with a frightened desire for something that would drown out the roaring wind of tragedy which filled her ears in every pause of the day’s activities, and woke her up at night out of the soundest sleep.  Night after night, she found herself sitting up in bed, her night-gown and hair damp with perspiration, Nelly’s scream ringing knife-like in her ears.  Then, rigid and wide-eyed she saw it all again, what had happened in those thirty seconds which had summed up and ended the lives of ’Gene and Nelly.

But one night as she sat thus in her bed, hammered upon beyond endurance, she saw as though she had not seen it before what ’Gene had finally done, his disregard of possible safety for himself, his abandon of his futile, desperate effort to free Nelly from the tangle where her childish vanity had cast her, the grandeur and completeness of his gesture when he had taken Nelly into his strong arms, to die with her.  Marise found herself crying as she had not cried for years.  The picture, burned into her memory, stood there endlessly in the black night till she understood it.  The tears came raining down her face, and with them went the strained, wild horror of the memory.

But the shadow and darkness hung about her like a cloud, through which she only dimly saw the neat, unhurried grace of Eugenia’s preparations for departure and far travels, and felt only a dimmed, vague echo of the emotion she had thought to feel at the disappearance of Mr. Welles, poor, weary, futile old crusader on his Rosinante.