But the sight of the trees came even into that inner darkness behind the fastened lids, for there was no escaping it.  Outside, in the light, she still knew that the leaves of the hollies glittered smoothly, that the dead foliage of the oaks hung crisp in the air about her, that the needles of the little junipers were pointing all one way.  The spread perception of the Forest was focused on herself, and no mere shutting of the eyes could hide its scattered yet concentrated stare—­the all-inclusive vision of great woods.

There was no wind, yet here and there a single leaf hanging by its dried-up stalk shook all alone with great rapidity—­rattling.  It was the sentry drawing attention to her presence.  And then, again, as once long weeks before, she felt their Being as a tide about her.  The tide had turned.  That memory of her childhood sands came back, when the nurse said, “The tide has turned now; we must go in,” and she saw the mass of piled-up waters, green and heaped to the horizon, and realized that it was slowly coming in.  The gigantic mass of it, too vast for hurry, loaded with massive purpose, she used to feel, was moving towards herself.  The fluid body of the sea was creeping along beneath the sky to the very spot upon the yellow sands where she stood and played.  The sight and thought of it had always overwhelmed her with a sense of awe—­as though her puny self were the object of the whole sea’s advance.  “The tide has turned; we had better now go in.”

This was happening now about her—­the same thing was happening in the woods—­slow, sure, and steady, and its motion as little discernible as the sea’s.  The tide had turned.  The small human presence that had ventured among its green and mountainous depths, moreover, was its objective.

That all was clear within her while she sat and waited with tight-shut lids.  But the next moment she opened her eyes with a sudden realization of something more.  The presence that it sought was after all not hers.  It was the presence of some one other than herself.  And then she understood.  Her eyes had opened with a click, it seemed, but the sound, in reality, was outside herself.

Across the clearing where the sunshine lay so calm and still, she saw the figure of her husband moving among the trees—­a man, like a tree, walking.

With hands behind his back, and head uplifted, he moved quite slowly, as though absorbed in his own thoughts.  Hardly fifty paces separated them, but he had no inkling of her presence there so near.  With mind intent and senses all turned inwards, he marched past her like a figure in a dream, and like a figure in a dream she saw him go.  Love, yearning, pity rose in a storm within her, but as in nightmare she found no words or movement possible.  She sat and watched him go—­go from her—­go into the deeper reaches of the green enveloping woods.  Desire to save, to bid him stop and turn, ran in a passion through her being, but there was nothing she