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And I've done a pretty good stroke of business that I'm in a hurry to tell you about. You remember, don't you, how the Powers lost the title to their big woodlot? I don't know if you happen to remember all the details, how a lawyer named Lowder . . ." "I remember," said Marise, speaking for the first time, "all about it."
"I came over to talk to 'Gene and Nelly about some business," Marise said, over her shoulder, to Mrs. Powers, not able to take her eyes from the trio in the drama out there, "but I'd better wait till the tree is down before I speak to them." "'Twon't be long now. 'Gene's been at it quite a while, and he's stavin' away like all possessed.
He leaned back smoking peacefully, listening to Marise's voice brimming up all around the children's as they romped through "The raggle-taggle gypsies, oh!" What a mastery of the piano Marise had, subduing it to the slender pipe of those child-voices as long as they sang, and rolling out sumptuous harmonies in the intervals of the song. Lucky kids! Lucky kids! to have childhood memories like that.
Welles remarked with a gentle dignity, in evident allusion to Neale's cutting him short, "I only meant that I was very much interested in what I see here, and that I would like very much to know more about it." Neale felt he fairly owed him an apology. He began to understand what Marise meant when she had said the old fellow was one you loved on sight.
From the other end of the room came Frank's deep-mouthed shout, "The set is forming! Promenade to your places!" Nelly moved swiftly in that direction and again Vincent found himself opposite Frank, dancing this time with Marise Crittenden. The music broke out into its shaking, quavering iteration of the pulse of the dance. "Salute your partners!"
Yes, it was the car, approaching. The two glaring headlights swept the white road, stopped, and went out. For an instant the dark mass stood motionless in the starlight. Then something moved, a man's tall figure came up the path. "Is that you, Marise?" asked Neale's voice.
It was the same Vincent of the afternoon in Cousin Hetty's garden when the vulture of the desire to possess had left him for a moment in peace. Often and often he came thus as she played and leaned his head back and said, "Go on." And thus Marise knew he would always come. And thus she welcomed him. This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with his smoky, flaming brilliance.
Marise caught in the child's eyes the realness of her anxiety and thrilled to it, as she always did to any real emotion. "I'll help you look," she said, turning her eyes about the chicken-yard, crowded with voluble, intently self-centered, feathered personalities. "Which hen is his mother, Elly? "This one, Old Speckle. Oh, Mother, there he is, lying down. He must be feeling worse!"
He hesitated, shrinking back as from fire, from the answer he knew he must give. At last he forced it out, "I haven't any right. I don't want her to stay if she wants to go. I want Marise. But even more I want her to be happy." The thought, with all its implications, terrified him like a death-sentence, but he repeated it grimly, pressing it home fiercely, "I want her to be happy."
Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads up, Nelly's small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped hands held high. Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the spectacle they made. On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her fingers clasped by the huge knotted hand of 'Gene Powers, and on the other was rounded, rosy old Mr.
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