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.

"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.

"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, realized that perhaps he had not said
quite enough to comfort her. She was lying awake by his side, still
frightened. He put his head up in the darkness.