The fir, standing there decked out in the artificial
tawdriness of a double-dealing race, laid its wild sincere touch on
him--as sincere as the touch of dying human fingers--and let its
passing youth flow into him. It attracted his attention, and he turned
his head toward it as with recognition. Other boughs near the floor
likewise thrust themselves forward, hiding his feet so that he stood
ankle-deep in forestry.
This reunion did not escape her. Her overwrought imagination made of
it a sinister omen: the bough on his shoulder rested there as the old
forest claim; the boughs about his feet were the ancestral forest
tether. As he had stepped backward from her, Nature had asserted the
earlier right to him. In strange sickness and desolation of heart she
waited.
He stood facing her but looking past her at centuries long gone; the
first sound of his voice registered upon her ear some message of doom:
"Listen, Josephine!"
She buried her face in her hands.
"I cannot! I will not!"
"You will have to listen. You know that for some years, apart from my
other work, I have been gathering together the woodland customs of our
people and trying to trace them back to their origin and first
meaning.
Pages:
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106