iced, too, the apparent
depth of meaning he put into those simple words that "the wind had begun
to roar in the Forest ...further out." Her mind retained the
disagreeable impression that he meant more than he said. In his tone lay
quite another implication. It was not actually "wind" he spoke of, and
it would not remain "further out"...rather, it was coming in. Another
impression she got too--still more unwelcome--was that her husband
understood his hidden meaning.

~IV~

"David, dear," she observed gently as soon as they were alone
upstairs, "I have a horrible uneasy feeling about that man. I cannot get
rid of it." The tremor in per voice caught all his tenderness.

He turned to look at her. "Of what kind, my dear? You're so imaginative
sometimes, aren't you?"

"I think," she hesitated, stammering a little, confused, still
frightened, "I mean--isn't he a hypnotist, or full of those theosophical
ideas, or something of the sort? You know what I mean--"

He was too accustomed to her little confused alarms to explain them away
seriously as a rule, or to correct her verbal inaccuracies, but to-night
he felt she needed careful, tender treatment. He soothed her as best he
could.

"But there's no harm in that, even if he is," he answered quietly.
"Those are only new names for very old ideas, you know, dear." There was
no trace of impatience in his voice.

"That's what I mean," she replied, the texts he dreaded rising in an
unuttered crowd behind the words. "He's one of those things that we are
warned would come--one of those Latter-Day things." For her mind still
bristled with the bogeys of the Antichrist and Prophecy, and she had
only escaped the Number of the Beast, as it were, by the skin of her
teeth. The Pope drew most of her fire usually, because she could
understand him; the target was plain and she could shoot. But this
tree-and-forest business was so vague and horrible. It terrified her.
"He makes me think," she went on, "of Principalities and Powers in high
places, and of things that walk in the darkness. I did _not_ like the
way he spoke of trees getting alive in the night, and all that; it made
me think of wolves in sheep's clothing. And when I saw that awful thing
in the sky above the lawn--"

But he interrupted her at once, for that was something he had decided it
was best to leave unmentioned. Certainly it was better not discussed.

"He only meant, I think, Sophie," he put in gravely, yet with a l