eneath his breath.
"For they will not need me then. All the world can love them in the
spring. It's in the winter that they're lonely and neglected. I wish to
stay with them particularly then. I even feel I ought to--and I must."

And in this way, without further speech, the decision was made. Mrs.
Bittacy, at least, asked no more questions. Yet she could not bring
herself to show more sympathy than was necessary. She felt, for one
thing, that if she did, it might lead him to speak freely, and to tell
her things she could not possibly bear to know. And she dared not take
the risk of that.

~VII~

This was at the end of summer, but the autumn followed close. The
conversation really marked the threshold between the two seasons, and
marked at the same time the line between her husband's negative and
aggressive state. She almost felt she had done wrong to yield; he grew
so bold, concealment all discarded. He went, that is, quite openly to
the woods, forgetting all his duties, all his former occupations. He
even sought to coax her to go with him. The hidden thing blazed out
without disguise. And, while she trembled at his energy, she admired the
virile passion he displayed. Her jealousy had long ago retired before
her fear, accepting the second place. Her one desire now was to protect.
The wife turned wholly mother.

He said so little, but--he hated to come in. From morning to night he
wandered in the Forest; often he went out after dinner; his mind was
charged with trees--their foliage, growth, development; their wonder,
beauty, strength; their loneliness in isolation, their power in a herded
mass. He knew the effect of every wind upon them; the danger from the
boisterous north, the glory from the west, the eastern dryness, and the
soft, moist tenderness that a south wind left upon their thinning
boughs. He spoke all day of their sensations: how they drank the fading
sunshine, dreamed in the moonlight, thrilled to the kiss of stars. The
dew could bring them half the passion of the night, but frost sent them
plunging beneath the ground to dwell with hopes of a later coming
softness in their roots. They nursed the life they carried--insects,
larvae, chrysalis--and when the skies above them melted, he spoke of
them standing "motionless in an ecstasy of rain," or in the noon of
sunshine "self-poised upon their prodigy of shade."

And once in the middle of the night she woke at the sound of his voice,
and heard him--wi