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."