l the forces of a human being combine unconsciously to eject a grain
of sand that has crept beneath the skin to cause discomfort, so the
entire mass of what Sanderson had called the Collective Consciousness of
the Forest strove to eject this human atom that stood across the path of
its desire. Loving her husband, she had crept beneath its skin. It was
her they would eject and take away; it was her they would destroy, not
him. Him, whom they loved and needed, they would keep alive. They meant
to take him living. She reached the house in safety, though she never
remembered how she found her way. It was made all simple for her. The
branches almost urged her out.

But behind her, as she left the shadowed precincts, she felt as though
some towering Angel of the Woods let fall across the threshold the
flaming sword of a countless multitude of leaves that formed behind her
a barrier, green, shimmering, and impassable. Into the Forest she never
walked again.

And she went about her daily duties with a calm and quietness that was a
perpetual astonishment even to herself, for it hardly seemed of this
world at all. She talked to her husband when he came in for tea--after
dark. Resignation brings a curious large courage--when there is nothing
more to lose. The soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cut
sometimes to the heights?

"David, I went into the Forest, too, this morning, soon after you I
went. I saw you there."

"Wasn't it wonderful?" he answered simply, inclining his head a little.
There was no surprise or annoyance in his look; a mild and gentle
_ennui_ rather. He asked no real question. She thought of some garden
tree the wind attacks too suddenly, bending it over when it does not
want to bend--the mild unwillingness with which it yields. She often saw
him this way now, in the terms of trees.

"It was very wonderful indeed, dear, yes," she replied low, her voice
not faltering though indistinct. "But for me it was too--too strange and
big."

The passion of tears lay just below the quiet voice all unbetrayed.
Somehow she kept them back.

There was a pause, and then he added:

"I find it more and more so every day." His voice passed through the
lamp-lit room like a murmur of the wind in branches. The look of youth
and happiness she had caught upon his face out there had wholly gone,
and an expression of weariness was in its place, as of a man distressed
vaguely at finding himself in uncongenial surro