He nodded, though he by no means agreed with her. "It would be just the same," she insisted with almost too much emphasis, "if Ben were well. I think I must have become panic stricken with myself." He frowned. Then he broke out fiercely, "It's the feel of all the silent people in the city around you, perhaps. They are ghosts, these strangers,--human ghosts with fingers which clutch your throat if you are n't careful. You sense them in New York as nowhere else." She glanced up quickly, "That's an odd idea," she replied. "The loneliness comes then because you are n't really alone." "Yes--here in New York." "But that is n't true of the woods," she asserted. "You have been much among the trees?" he asked quickly, his voice softening. "Not very much. But enough to learn to love them. Especially the inner woods." He knew what she meant--the forests where things still grow for the sky and the beasts and not for man; where man may come as guest but not as master. "No," he answered, "one never feels alone there." "In there," she faltered, trying to express vague thoughts which yet were most real to her, "everything seems to be normal." He studied her with increasing interest and a growing sense of comradeship. Her eyes were wonderful as she sat chin in hands, gazing into the fire, lost in some pleasant picture of the past. When he looked into them, they caught him up again as they had done in the cafe. They swept him to the rhythm of some haunting music back to the days when his blood had run strong--back to the beauty of the hills at twenty when he had not felt big enough by himself to absorb their full marvel. In a dim mystical way he had realized even then that the keenest edge of their meaning was escaping him. The blue sky above the trees had seemed like the laughing eyes of a woman and the rustle of leaves like the whisper of her skirt. He had laughed back boldly then, feeling in the pride of his strength little need of them. Now the eyes of this girl, and the soft modeling of every line of her,