Marise herself did not feel at all brave. She sat down heavily in a chair by the window looking out at the man who for his wife's sake was killing something vital and alive. He had done that before, 'Gene had. He went at it now with a furious haste which had something dreadful in it.
Nelly, who had sat down to rest on the pile of brush and poles, seemed a carved and painted statuette of ivory and gold.
She took off her ruffled pretty hat, and laid it down on the white-birch poles, so that she could tip her head far back and see the very top of the tree. Her braids shone molten in the sunshine. Her beautiful face was impassive, secreting behind a screen all that Marise was sure she must have been feeling.
'Gene, catching sight of her now, in a side-glance, stopped abruptly in the middle of a swing, and shouted to her to "get off that brush-pile. That's jus' where I'm lottin' on layin' the tree."
Somewhat startled, Nelly sprang up and moved around to the other side, back of him, although she called protestingly, "Gracious, you're not near through yet!"
'Gene made no answer, returning to the fury of his assault on what he so much loved. The great trunk now had a gaping raw gash in its side. Nelly idled back of him, looking up at the tree, down at him. What was she thinking about?
Marise wondered if someone with second-sight could have seen Frank Warner, there between the husband and wife? 'Gene's face was still gray in spite of the heat and his fierce exertion. Glistening streams of perspiration ran down his cheeks.
What did the future hold for 'Gene? What possible escape was there from the tragic net he had wrapped stranglingly around himself?
Very distantly, like something dreamed, it came to Marise that once for an instant the simple, violent solution had seemed the right one to her. Could she have thought that?
What a haunted house was the human heart, with phantoms from the long-dead past intruding their uninvited ghastly death's-heads among the living.