them. They were aware of her and had turned to gaze with their myriad,
vast sight upon the intruder. They shouted at her in the silence. For
she wanted to look back at them, but it was like staring at a crowd, and
her glance merely shifted from one tree to another, hurriedly, finding
in none the one she sought. They saw her so easily, each and all. The
rows that stood behind her also stared. But she could not return the
gaze. Her husband, she realized, could. And their steady stare shocked
her as though in some sense she knew that she was naked. They saw so
much of her: she saw of them--so little.

Her efforts to return their gaze were pitiful. The constant shifting
increased her bewilderment. Conscious of this awful and enormous sight
all over her, she let her eyes first rest upon the ground, and then she
closed them altogether. She kept the lids as tight together as ever they
would go.

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