“But India,” he said, presently in a lower voice, “India is so far away—­from this little English forest.  The trees, too, are utterly different for one thing?”

The rustle of skirts warned of Mrs. Bittacy’s approach.  This was a sentence he could turn round another way in case she came up and pressed for explanation.

“There is communion among trees all the world over,” was the strange quick reply.  “They always know.”

“They always know!  You think then—?”

“The winds, you see—­the great, swift carriers!  They have their ancient rights of way about the world.  An easterly wind, for instance, carrying on stage by stage as it were—­linking dropped messages and meanings from land to land like the birds—­an easterly wind—­”

Mrs. Bittacy swept in upon them with the tumbler—­

“There, David,” she said, “that will ward off any beginnings of attack.  Just a spoonful, dear.  Oh, oh! not all !” for he had swallowed half the contents at a single gulp as usual; “another dose before you go to bed, and the balance in the morning, first thing when you wake.”

She turned to her guest, who put the tumbler down for her upon a table at his elbow.  She had heard them speak of the east wind.  She emphasized the warning she had misinterpreted.  The private part of the conversation came to an abrupt end.

“It is the one thing that upsets him more than any other—­an east wind,” she said, “and I am glad, Mr. Sanderson, to hear you think so too.”

III

A deep hush followed, in the middle of which an owl was heard calling its muffled note in the forest.  A big moth whirred with a soft collision against one of the windows.  Mrs. Bittacy started slightly, but no one spoke.  Above the trees the stars were faintly visible.  From the distance came the barking of a dog.

Bittacy, relighting his cigar, broke the little spell of silence that had caught all three.

“It’s rather a comforting thought,” he said, throwing the match out of the window, “that life is about us everywhere, and that there is really no dividing line between what we call organic and inorganic.”

“The universe, yes,” said Sanderson, “is all one, really.  We’re puzzled by the gaps we cannot see across, but as a fact, I suppose, there are no gaps at all.”

Mrs. Bittacy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile.  She feared long words she did not understand.  Beelzebub lay hid among too many syllables.

“In trees and plants especially, there dreams an exquisite life that no one yet has proved unconscious.”

“Or conscious either, Mr. Sanderson,” she neatly interjected.  “It’s only man that was made after His image, not shrubberies and things....”

Her husband interposed without delay.

“It is not necessary,” he explained suavely, “to say that they’re alive in the sense that we are alive.  At the same time,” with an eye to his wife, “I see no harm in holding, dear, that all created things contain some measure of His life Who made them.  It’s only beautiful to hold that He created nothing dead.  We are not pantheists for all that!” he added soothingly.