For this breaking up of the cedar had stirred again her slumbering alarms.  It revived memories of the visit of Mr. Sanderson that had been sinking into oblivion; she recalled his queer and odious way of talking, and many things she hoped forgotten drew their heads up from that subconscious region to which all forgetting is impossible.  They looked at her and nodded.  They were full of life; they had no intention of being pushed aside and buried permanently.  “Now look!” they whispered, “didn’t we tell you so?” They had been merely waiting the right moment to assert their presence.  And all her former vague distress crept over her.  Anxiety, uneasiness returned.  That dreadful sinking of the heart came too.

This incident of the cedar’s breaking up was actually so unimportant, and yet her husband’s attitude towards it made it so significant.  There was nothing that he said in particular, or did, or left undone that frightened, her, but his general air of earnestness seemed so unwarranted.  She felt that he deemed the thing important.  He was so exercised about it.  This evidence of sudden concern and interest, buried all the summer from her sight and knowledge, she realized now had been buried purposely, he had kept it intentionally concealed.  Deeply submerged in him there ran this tide of other thoughts, desires, hopes.  What were they?  Whither did they lead?  The accident to the tree betrayed it most unpleasantly, and, doubtless, more than he was aware.

She watched his grave and serious face as he worked there with the children, and as she watched she felt afraid.  It vexed her that the children worked so eagerly.  They unconsciously supported him.  The thing she feared she would not even name.  But it was waiting.

Moreover, as far as her puzzled mind could deal with a dread so vague and incoherent, the collapse of the cedar somehow brought it nearer.  The fact that, all so ill-explained and formless, the thing yet lay in her consciousness, out of reach but moving and alive, filled her with a kind of puzzled, dreadful wonder.  Its presence was so very real, its power so gripping, its partial concealment so abominable.  Then, out of the dim confusion, she grasped one thought and saw it stand quite clear before her eyes.  She found difficulty in clothing it in words, but its meaning perhaps was this:  That cedar stood in their life for something friendly; its downfall meant disaster; a sense of some protective influence about the cottage, and about her husband in particular, was thereby weakened.

“Why do you fear the big winds so?” he had asked her several days before, after a particularly boisterous day; and the answer she gave surprised her while she gave it.  One of those heads poked up unconsciously, and let slip the truth.

“Because, David, I feel they—­bring the Forest with them,” she faltered.  “They blow something from the trees—­into the mind—­into the house.”

He looked at her keenly for a moment.