The axe-strokes stopped; so suddenly that the ear went on hearing them, ghost-like, in the intense silence. 'Gene stood upright, lifting his wet, gray face. "She's coming now," he said.
Marise looked out, astonished. To her eyes the tree stood as massively firm as she had ever seen it. But 'Gene's attitude was of strained, expectant certainty: he stood near Nelly and as she looked up at the tree, he looked at her. At that look Marise felt the cold perspiration on her own temples.
Nelly stepped sideways a little, tipping her head to see, and cried out, "Yes, I see it beginning to slant. How slow it goes!
"It'll go fast enough in a minute," said 'Gene.
Of what followed, not an instant ever had for Marise the quality of reality. It always remained for her a superb and hideous dream, something symbolical, glorious, and horrible which had taken place in her brain, not in the lives of human beings.
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. . . .