In his coat was a spray of faded yellow beech leaves.  “I brought this from the Forest to you,” he said, with all the air that belonged to his little acts of devotion long ago.  And she took the spray of leaves mechanically with a smile and a murmured “thank you, dear,” as though he had unknowingly put into her hands the weapon for her own destruction and she had accepted it.

And when the tea was over and he left the room, he did not go to his study, or to change his clothes.  She heard the front door softly shut behind him as he again went out towards the Forest.

A moment later she was in her room upstairs, kneeling beside the bed—­the side she slept on—­and praying wildly through a flood of tears that God would save and keep him to her.  Wind brushed the window panes behind her while she knelt.

VIII

One sunny November morning, when the strain had reached a pitch that made repression almost unmanageable, she came to an impulsive decision, and obeyed it.  Her husband had again gone out with luncheon for the day.  She took adventure in her hands and followed him.  The power of seeing-clear was strong upon her, forcing her up to some unnatural level of understanding.  To stay indoors and wait inactive for his return seemed suddenly impossible.  She meant to know what he knew, feel what he felt, put herself in his place.  She would dare the fascination of the Forest—­share it with him.  It was greatly daring; but it would give her greater understanding how to help and save him and therefore greater Power.  She went upstairs a moment first to pray.

In a thick, warm skirt, and wearing heavy boots—­those walking boots she used with him upon the mountains about Seillans—­she left the cottage by the back way and turned towards the Forest.  She could not actually follow him, for he had started off an hour before and she knew not exactly his direction.  What was so urgent in her was the wish to be with him in the woods, to walk beneath leafless branches just as he did:  to be there when he was there, even though not together.  For it had come to her that she might thus share with him for once this horrible mighty life and breathing of the trees he loved.  In winter, he had said, they needed him particularly, and winter now was coming.  Her love must bring her something of what he felt himself—­the huge attraction, the suction and the pull of all the trees.  Thus, in some vicarious fashion, she might share, though unknown to himself, this very thing that was taking him away from her.  She might thus even lessen its attack upon himself.

The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she obeyed without a sign of hesitation.  Deeper comprehension would come to her of the whole awful puzzle.  And come it did, yet not in the way she imagined and expected.