teapot warmed, the muffins in the fender keeping hot, all ready for his
return, when she realized quite abruptly that this thing which took him
off, which kept him out so many hours day after day, this thing that was
against her own little will and instincts--was enormous as the sea. It
was no mere prettiness of single Trees, but something massed and
mountainous. About her rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky,
its scale gigantic, its power utterly prodigious. What she knew of it
hitherto as green and delicate forms waving and rustling in the winds
was but, as it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the
nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, were
sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remained
invisible. The awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distance
passed into that still room about her with the firelight and hissing
kettle. Out yonder--in the Forest further out--the thing that was ever
roaring at the center was dreadfully increasing.

The sense of definite battle, too--battle between herself and the Forest
for his soul--came with it. Its presentiment was as clear as though
Thompson had come into the room and quietly told her that the cottage
was surrounded. "Please, ma'am, there are trees come up about the
house," she might have suddenly announced. And equally might have heard
her own answer: "It's all right, Thompson. The main body is still far
away."

Immediately upon its heels, then, came another truth, with a close
reality that shocked her. She saw that jealousy was not confined to the
human and animal world alone, but ran though all creation. The Vegetable
Kingdom knew it too. So-called inanimate nature shared it with the rest.
Trees felt it. This Forest just beyond the window--standing there in the
silence of the autumn evening across the little lawn--this Forest