which she came. For
when she glanced behind her--rarely--the way she had come was shadowy
and lost.

Yet the morning sparkled overhead, and a glance of excitement ran
quivering through the entire day. It was what she always knew as
"children's weather," so clear and harmless, without a sign of danger,
nothing ominous to threaten or alarm. Steadfast in her purpose, looking
back as little as she dared, Sophia Bittacy marched slowly and
deliberately into the heart of the silent woods, deeper, ever deeper.

And then, abruptly, in an open space where the sunshine fell unhindered,
she stopped. It was one of the breathing places of the forest. Dead,
withered bracken lay in patches of unsightly grey. There were bits of
heather too. All round the trees stood looking on--oak, beech, holly,
ash, pine, larch, with here and there small groups of juniper. On the
lips of this breathing space of the woods she stopped to rest,
disobeying her instinct for the first time. For the other instinct in
her was to go on. She did not really want to rest.

This was the little act that brought it to her--the wireless message
from a vast Emitter.

"I've been stopped," she thought to herself with a horrid qualm.

She looked about her in this quiet, ancient place. Nothing stirred.
There was no life nor sign of life; no birds sang; no rabbits scuttled
off at her approach. The stillness was bewildering, and gravity hung
down upon it like a heavy curtain. It hushed the heart in her. Could
this be part of what her husband felt--this sense of thick entanglement
with stems, boughs, roots, and foliage?

"This has always been as it is now," she thought, yet not knowing why
she thought it. "Ever since the Forest grew it has been still and secret
here. It has never changed." The curtain of silence drew closer while
she said it, thickening round her. "For a thousand years--I'm here with
a thousand years. And behind this place stand all the forests of the
world!"

So foreign to her temperament were such thoughts, and so alien to all
she had been taught to look for in Nature, that she strove against them.
She made an effort to oppose. But they clung and haunted just the same;
they refused to be dispersed. The curtain hung dense and heavy as though
its texture thickened. The air with difficulty came through.

And then she thought that curtain stirred. There was movement somewhere.
That obscure dim thing which ever broods behind the visible appearances
of