ittle
smile, "that trees may have a measure of conscious life--rather a nice
idea on the whole, surely,--something like that bit we read in the Times
the other night, you remember--and that a big forest may possess a sort
of Collective Personality. Remember, he's an artist, and poetical."

"It's dangerous," she said emphatically. "I feel it's playing with fire,
unwise, unsafe--"

"Yet all to the glory of God," he urged gently. "We must not shut our
ears and eyes to knowledge--of any kind, must we?"

"With you, David, the wish is always farther than the thought," she
rejoined. For, like the child who thought that "suffered under Pontius
Pilate" was "suffered under a bunch of violets," she heard her proverbs
phonetically and reproduced them thus. She hoped to convey her warning
in the quotation. "And we must always try the spirits whether they be of
God," she added tentatively.

"Certainly, dear, we can always do that," he assented, getting into bed.

But, after a little pause, during which she blew the light out, David
Bittacy settling down to sleep with an excitement in his blood that was
new and bewilderingly delightful, realized that perhaps he had not said
quite enough to comfort her. She was lying awake by his side, still
frightened. He put his head up in the darkness.

"Sophie," he said softly, "you must remember, too, that in any case
between us and--and all that sort of thing--there is a great gulf fixed,
a gulf that cannot be crossed--er--while we are still in the body."

And hearing no reply, he satisfied himself that she was already asleep
and happy. But Mrs. Bittacy was not asleep. She heard the sentence, only
she said nothing because she felt her thought was better unexpressed.
She was afraid to hear the words in the darkness. The Forest outside was
listening and might hear them too--the Forest that was "roaring further
out."

And the thought was this: That gulf, of course, existed, but Sanderson
had somehow bridged it.

It was much later than night when she awoke out of troubled, uneasy
dreams and heard a sound that twisted her very nerves with fear. It
passed immediately with full waking, for, listen as she might, there was
nothing audible but the inarticulate murmur of the night. It was in her
dreams she heard it, and the dreams had vanished with it. But the sound
was recognizable, for it was that rushing noise that had come across the
lawn; only this time closer. Just above her face while she s