So many thoughts were in her, so keenly did she feel a kinship with the trees, with the singing birds, with the west wind that cleared the air, that she wished she had some one to speak to about it. But a great shyness... And perhaps, even, it could n't be said in words, perhaps music. Well, hardly even that. She had tried to speak to Barry about it. But Barry had kissed her and thought her a moonstruck kid, as he said. Poor Barry! Directors of periodicals were so hard on him! It was dreadful to hurt him that way. Though she confessed the treason with a shock to herself, she found it hard, well-nigh impossible, to read what he wrote. It was hard for her to understand artificial women and noble men. All she knew was nature, and that was not artificial. Nor was it noble, either, she thought; it had just a sweet, harmonious kindliness. There could be nobility only where ignominy existed too--and in nature was no ignominy. She wished she knew more about men and women, for Barry's sake, to understand these matters he wrote of, passion and crime. But dramatic passion seemed so needless in her eyes, and crime was so sickly; she just felt a pity for it, a sense that they, poor people, must be crazy to do such things. Oh, she wished she understood--could help him! She remembered when, over a year ago, a little periodical had decided to print one of his writings, the letter came as the first snowflakes fell. And she could not feel excited with him, because in her heart, beyond her control, was some strange rhythm. The snow, the soft and harmonious snow ... and in her head was a picture of nursery days, of pine-trees under a delicate white weight, and old Saint Nicholas, whom little children called Santa Claus, driving through a fleecy world ... his red cheeks, his white beard, his reindeer with the silver tinkling bells. And reindeer brought the thought to her of squat, hairy Laplanders, fishing solemnly near the Pole, through a little hole they had cut in the ice, while away in the background ambled a great polar bear. A very terrible animal it must be, but one always thought of it as gentle as some big old dog. Oh, she wished she were a better woman, a woman who had her husband's interests at heart! People said a woman could make a man. She wondered how. And it was said of some that their husbands owed their careers all to them. How? But how? And even if she knew, her terrible shyness... She could be intimate with dogs, and horses, and solemn, aloof kine. But words did n't come to her somehow. It was such a drawback!