These things
do not breathe." She said it with triumph.

Then Sanderson put in a word. But he spoke rather to himself or to his
host than by way of serious rejoinder to the ruffled lady.

"But plants do breathe too, you know," he said. "They breathe, they eat,
they digest, they move about, and they adapt themselves to their
environment as men and animals do. They have a nervous system too... at
least a complex system of nuclei which have some of the qualities of
nerve cells. They may have memory too. Certainly, they know definite
action in response to stimulus. And though this may be physiological, no
one has proved that it is only that, and not--psychological."

He did not notice, apparently, the little gasp that was audible behind
the yellow shawl. Bittacy cleared his throat, threw his extinguished
cigar upon the lawn, crossed and recrossed his legs.

"And in trees," continued the other, "behind a great forest, for
instance," pointing towards the woods, "may stand a rather splendid
Entity that manifests through all the thousand individual trees--some
huge collective life, quite as minutely and delicately organized as our
own. It might merge and blend with ours under certain conditions, so
that we could understand it by _being_ it, for a time at least. It
might even engulf human vitality into the immense whirlpool of its own
vast dreaming life. The pull of a big forest on a man can be tremendous
and utterly overwhelming."

The mouth of Mrs. Bittacy was heard to close with a snap. Her shawl, and
particularly her crackling dress, exhaled the protest that burned within
her like a pain. She was too distressed to be overawed, but at the same
time too confused 'mid the litter of words and meanings half understood,
to find immediate phrases she could use. Whatever the actual meaning of
his language might be, however, and whatever subtle dangers lay
concealed behind them meanwhile, they certainly wove a kind of gentle
spell with the glimmering darkness that held all three delicately
enmeshed there by that open window. The odors of dewy lawn, flowers,
trees, and earth formed part of it.

"The moods," he continued, "that people waken in us are due to their
hidden life affecting our own. Deep calls to sleep. A person, for
instance, joins you in an empty room: you both instantly change. The new
arrival, though in silence, has caused a change of mood. May not the
moods of Nature touch and stir us in virtue of a similar prerog