"But it's rising," he answered, "rising in the east. I heard it in the
bare and hungry larches. They need the sun and dew, and always cry out
when the wind's upon them from the east."

She sent a short unspoken prayer most swiftly to her deity as she heard
him say it. For every time now, when he spoke in this familiar, intimate
way of the life of the trees, she felt a sheet of cold fasten tight
against her very skin and flesh. She shivered. How could he possibly
know such things?

Yet, in all else, and in the relations of his daily life, he was sane
and reasonable, loving, kind and tender. It was only on the subject of
the trees he seemed unhinged and queer. Most curiously it seemed that,
since the collapse of the cedar they both loved, though in different
fashion, his departure from the normal had increased. Why else did he
watch them as a man might watch a sickly child? Why did he hunger
especially in the dusk to catch their "mood of night" as he called it?
Why think so carefully upon them when the frost was threatening or the
wind appeared to rise?

As she put it so frequently now herself--How could he possibly _know_
such things?

He went. As she closed the front door after him she heard the distant
roaring in the Forest.

And then it suddenly struck her: How could she know them too?

It dropped upon her like a blow that she felt at once all over, upon