truth. The trees were glad that she should go. They helped her on her
way. The Forest did not want her.

The tide was coming in, indeed, yet not for her.

And so, in another of those flashes of clear-vision that of late had
lifted life above the normal level, she saw and understood the whole
terrible thing complete.

Till now, though unexpressed in thought or language, her fear had been
that the woods her husband loved would somehow take him from her--to
merge his life in theirs--even to kill him on some mysterious way. This
time she saw her deep mistake, and so seeing, let in upon herself the
fuller agony of horror. For their jealousy was not the petty jealousy of
animals or humans. They wanted him because they loved him, but they did
_ not_ want him dead. Full charged with his splendid life and enthusiasm
they wanted him. They wanted him--alive.

It was she who stood in their way, and it was she whom they intended to
remove.

This was what brought the sense of abject helplessness. She stood upon
the sands against an entire ocean slowly rolling in against her. For, as
all the forces of a human being combine unconsciously to eject a grain
of sand that has crept beneath the skin to cause discomfort, so the
entire mass of what Sanderson had called the Collective Consciousness of
the Forest strove to eject this human atom that stood across the path of
its desire. Loving her husband, she had crept beneath its skin. It was
her they would eject and take away; it was her they would destroy, not
him. Him, whom they loved and needed, they would keep alive. They meant