Part Three - Marise Looks Down on the Stars

July 22.

She passed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun, her
feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along the dusty
road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers, march, march,
came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance from that to Mrs.
Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's, to the name on the
envelope . . . and then like the door to a white-hot blast-furnace thrown
open in her face, came the searing conception of the possibility that it
might be true, and all the world lost.

The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at
self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce incapacity
to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one from another
with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she had been dreaming.
It was all preposterous!

The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and there
pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the beginning . . .
what Eugenia had said, had said that Neale had told her . . . what Mrs.
Powers had said, "Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing" . . .
what the stenographer had said . . . the name on the envelope . . .
suppose it should be true.

She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's voices
sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on, Nelly, we better
be going. There's all the work to do."