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Marise stood up, carrying the old woman with her. She was entirely certain now that she was in a nightmare, from which she would presently awake, wet with cold sweat. "Come! Come!" cried the old woman, beating her hands on Marise's arm. "Perhaps it ain't too late. Perhaps you can do something."
I must go on just as before . . ." he groaned, "that will take all the strength I have." It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them, such as they were to each other, would come from Marise's acting with her own strength on her own decision. By all that was sacred, he would never by word or act hamper that decision. He would be himself, honestly.
The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable association of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had done the Powers out of their inheritance had come from New Hampshire. However, she supposed there were other people in the state besides dishonest lawyers. Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was absorbed by it.
Marise's head felt quite clear and lucid now; her consciousness as if washed clean by its temporary absence from life. She tried to sit up and smile at Neale and Agnes. She had never fainted away in all her life before. She felt very apologetic and weak. And she felt herself in a queer, literal way another person. Neale sat down by her now and put his arm around her.
It was the half-hour of pause after lunch. The children played idly with the fox-terrier and lounged on the steps of the side-porch, strong and brown, living cups filled to the brim with life. Neale had pushed his chair back from the table, lighted his pipe, and sat meditating. Presently he put out his hand and laid it on Marise's, who had turned to look down the sun-flooded valley.
In all this scrawling ant-heap of humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live. And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing, to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only truth. That . . . and you and I!" In the distance, someone called Marise's name.
"Oh, it's possible enough, I suppose," admitted Neale. "But she seems perfectly contented, and thinks the world of the children." Marise's face clouded. The phrase had recalled her dark preoccupations of a moment ago.
With no apparent volition of her own, she felt something very strong within her raise a mighty head and look about, stirred to watchfulness and suspicion by that luckless phrase. She recognized it . . . the habit of honesty of thought, not native to Marise's heart, but planted there by her relation with Neale's stark, plain integrity.
There was a man's book, he thought. But his pipe was out. He laid the book down to light it before he began to read. In spite of himself he listened to hear what they were saying now in the next room. Eugenia was talking and he didn't like what she was saying about those recurrent dreams of Marise's, because he knew it was making poor Marise squirm.
Despair was a real and honest and deadly emotion. Folks with appetites sated by having everything they wanted, oughtn't to use despair as a sort of condiment to perk up their jaded zest in life. "Confounded play-actors!" he thought, and wondered what Marise's reaction to them was. He foresaw that it was going to be too much for his patience to listen to them.
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