companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding
shadows.

For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too
was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not
altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,
and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far
point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be seen
to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly upon me;
my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling in me I
wished to face and probe to the bottom.

When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell
of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere "scenery"
could have produced such an effect. There was something more here,
something to alarm.

I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering
willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one
and all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange
distress. But the _willows_ especially: for ever they went on chattering
and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out,
sometimes sighing--but what it was they made so much to-do about
belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it
was utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet
kindly elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another
plane of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a
mystery known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together,
oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even