ut the sight of the trees came even into that inner darkness behind the
fastened lids, for there was no escaping it. Outside, in the light, she
still knew that the leaves of the hollies glittered smoothly, that the
dead foliage of the oaks hung crisp in the air about her, that the
needles of the little junipers were pointing all one way. The spread
perception of the Forest was focused on herself, and no mere shutting of
the eyes could hide its scattered yet concentrated stare--the
all-inclusive vision of great woods.

There was no wind, yet here and there a single leaf hanging by its
dried-up stalk shook all alone with great rapidity--rattling. It was the
sentry drawing attention to her presence. And then, again, as once long
weeks before, she felt their Being as a tide about her. The tide had
turned. That memory of her childhood sands came back, when the nurse
said, "The tide has turned now; we must go in," and she saw the mass of
piled-up waters, green and heaped to the horizon, and realized that it
was slowly coming in. The gigantic mass of it, too vast for hurry,
loaded with massive purpose, she used to feel, was moving towards
herself. The fluid body of the sea was creeping along beneath the sky to
the very spot upon the yellow sands where she stood and played. The
sight and thought of it had always overwhelmed her with a sense of
awe--as though her puny self were the object of the whole sea's advance.
"The tide has turned; we had better now go in."

This was happening now about her--the same thing was happening in the
woods--slow, sure, and steady, and its motion as little discernible as
the sea's. The tide had turned. The small human presence that had
ventured among its green and mountainous depths, moreover, was its
objective.

That all was clear within her while she sat and waited with tight-shut
lids. But the next moment she opened her eyes with a sudden realization
of something more. The presence that it sought was after all not hers.
It was the presence of some one other than herself. And then she
understood. Her eyes had opened with a click, it seemed, but the sound,
in reality, was outside herself.

Across the clearing where the sunshine lay so calm and still, she saw
the figure of her husband moving among the trees--a man, like a tree,
walking.

With hands behind his back, and head uplifted, he moved quite slowly, as
though absorbed in his own thoughts. Hardly fifty paces separated them,
but he had