further out.'

But Mrs. Bittacy noticed about him two things which increased her uneasiness. She noticed the shining of his eyes, because a similar light had suddenly come into her husband's ; and she noticed, too, the apparent depth of meaning he put into those simple words that' the wind had begun to roar in the Forest . . . further out.' Her mind retained the disagreeable impression that he meant more than he said. In his tone lay quite another implication. It was not actually * wind ' he spoke of, and it would not remain * further out' . . . rather, it was coming in. Another impression she got too—still more unwelcome—was that her husband understood his hidden meaning.

* DAVID, dear,' she observed gently as soon as they were alone upstairs, * I have a horrible uneasy feeling about that man. I cannot get rid of it.' The tremor in her voice caught all his tenderness.

He turned to look at her. ' Of what kind, my dear ? You're so imaginative sometimes, aren't you ?'

* I think,' she hesitated, stammering a little, confused, still frightened, ' I mean — isn't he a hypnotist, or full of those theofosical ideas, or something of the sort ? You know what I mean—'

He was too accustomed to her little confused alarms to explain them away seriously as a rule, or to correct her verbal inaccuracies, but to-night he felt she needed careful, tender treatment. He soothed her as best he could.

4 But there's no harm in that, even if he is,' he answered quietly. * Those are only new names for very old ideas, you know, dear.' There was no trace of impatience in his voice.

'That's what I mean,' she replied, the texts he dreaded rising in an unuttered crowd behind the words. * He's one of those things that we are warned would come —one of those-Latter-Day things.' For her mind still bristled with the bogeys of Antichrist and Prophecy, and she had only escaped

39

the Number of the Beast, as it were, by the skin of her teeth. The Pope drew most of her fire usually, because she could understand him; the target was plain and she could shoot. But this tree-and-forest business was so vague and horrible. It terrified her. ' He makes me think,' she went on, * of Principalities and Powers in high places, and of things that walk in darkness. I did not like the way he spoke of trees getting alive in the night, and all that; it made me think of wolves in sheep's clothing. And when I saw that awful thing in the sky above the lawn—'

But he interrupted her at once, for that was something he had decided it was best to leave unmentioned. Certainly it was better not discussed.

4 He only meant, I think, Sophie,' he put in gravely, yet with a little 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.

THE MAN WHOM THE TREES LOVED 41

* 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, realised that perhaps he had not said quite enough to comfort her.