im and therefore greater
Power. She went upstairs a moment first to pray.

In a thick, warm skirt, and wearing heavy boots--those walking boots she
used with him upon the mountains about Seillans--she left the cottage by
the back way and turned towards the Forest. She could not actually
follow him, for he had started off an hour before and she knew not
exactly his direction. What was so urgent in her was the wish to be with
him in the woods, to walk beneath leafless branches just as he did: to
be there when he was there, even though not together. For it had come to
her that she might thus share with him for once this horrible mighty
life and breathing of the trees he loved. In winter, he had said, they
needed him particularly, and winter now was coming. Her love must bring
her something of what he felt himself--the huge attraction, the suction
and the pull of all the trees. Thus, in some vicarious fashion, she
might share, though unknown to himself, this very thing that was taking
him away from her. She might thus even lessen its attack upon himself.

The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she obeyed without a sign of
hesitation. Deeper comprehension would come to her of the whole awful
puzzle. And come it did, yet not in the way she imagined and expected.

The air was very still, the sky a cold pale blue, but cloudless. The
entire Forest stood silent, at attention. It knew perfectly well that
she had come. It knew the moment when she entered; watched and followed
her; and behind her something dropped without a sound and shut her in.
Her feet upon the glades of mossy grass fell silently, as the oaks and
beeches shifted past in rows and took up their positions at her back. It
was not pleasant, this way they grew so dense behind her the instant she
had passed. She realized that they gathered in an ever-growing army,
massed, herded, trooped, between her and the cottage, shutting off
escape. They let her pass so easily, but to get out again she would know
them differently--thick, crowded, branches all drawn and hostile.
Already their increasing numbers bewildered her. In front, they looked
so sparse and scattered, with open spaces where the sunshine fell; but
when she turned it seemed they stood so close together, a serried army,
darkening the sunlight. They blocked the day, collected all the shadows,
stood with their leafless and forbidding rampart like the night. They
swallowed down into themselves the very glade by