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 '