They were in a tanglewood of tall timber—mammoth cedars that looked centuries old, and lofty elms and maples and hemlocks lifting their heads defiantly. But it was a pitiful defiance after all, for on every side lay fallen giants that had succumbed as they must one day succumb to a force stronger than themselves, and their stricken forms, their outstretched arms told of the vanquishment. Not even the mosses and the friendly vines clambering from limb to limb could hide their shame.
"Oh, this is nature's tragedy!" cried Margaret. He had observed in her a habit of endowing inanimate objects with life, and suffering or rejoicing with them. "They had to give up! They simply had to give up to a power that was mightier than they!"
"If they had only bent," he said, "they might have been standing yet."
"How can an oak bend?" she cried. "Even a tree must live according to its nature, and then—when the storm overpowers it—go down. So must we all."
He stood idly throwing pieces of bark into the black depths of the stream and watching them float off. He was thinking. "What an intense creature she is!"
When next she spoke it was to repeat the opening lines of Bryant's "Forest Hymn,"—her hands clasped on her heaving breast and her head thrown back. It would not have surprised him much if she had dropped to her knees and begun crossing herself, or have prostrated herself upon the walk, her forehead in the dust.
"It is not altogether flattering to my vanity," he mused, "but I'll bet a nickel she has forgotten that I am in the world. She is up in the clouds to-day for some reason. And yet—I could bring her down with a word—one little word." A boyish impulse came over him to try it. He called softly to the child who had run on up the walk,
"Philip!"
And yet more softly,
"Philip!"