He had not moved a step ever since she came up with him; was he rooted there, a tree himself, or a sapling? she did not know; and a panic began to spread over her at his fancied communion and alliance with nature. He was as brown as the earth, his clothes were the colour of dead leaves, his shirt was red like a robin’s breast. She remembered again the tales she had heard of him, and her own fancies that had followed him at the poacher’s trade, and this time she was afraid. She wove them together with the ignorant tales of the witchcraft among the Lovels. Could there be any truth in these fantastic notions? a secret of harmony in nature which entitled the initiated to powers inexplicable to the uninitiated? why did all animals so dread Olver Lovel? so trust to Nicholas? what of her own intuitions? her sudden, reasonless terrors? her mingled love and fear of the sarsen stones and of trees? her constant phrase, uttered half in jest, that some day she would be fetched away? And how was Lovel concerned? what part was he to have in the fetching? If only he were not so brown, brown as earth, lithe as the saplings, his shirt red as a robin’s breast; if only his eyes were not constant pilgrims to the horizon. She turned to leave him; at all costs she must get out of this wood, where she felt the old threat closing in round her, and in which Lovel was so mysteriously implicated. She turned slowly, not to betray her panic, still with the half-hope that he would speak and thereby break her spell. But when he spoke, it only deepened. “There is no misunderstanding,” he said. She wheeled round again upon him. “Then why have you so avoided me?” she said passionately. “A fortnight ago we met by the Grey Wethers, we had no quarrel, we parted friends. The next day you were sent for to the Manor House, you would not come, you sent your brother. I sent for you later myself,--a special message. You would not come. I thought I had offended you in some way. Do you know that I have looked for you all over the hills to ask you for your reason? A fortnight I have spent in looking for you.” “I know,” he said. “I have seen you.” Her voice died away; she had thrown herself against his defences and bruised herself. Her indignation had made a tiny uproar in the wood without detracting from the calm of the trees or the dignity of Lovel. She made a small gesture of abandonment; her one desire now was to get away. “There is nothing more to be said.”