His breath beat against his eyes. He drove his eyes to look into the trees. He saw chestnut-oak, basswood, willow. A circlet of stone tinkled in the pool of a log. Trees knotted over the earth, gnarled upward toward light. Young birch were a white chatter leading into the silence of forest. He saw trees. He saw through trees. He saw black trees flooded like sunny windows with a world beyond and within them.... He saw what stiffened him, stopped his blood. A face. The face of a life. He saw the white face of a man.... * * * * * Chairs were thick on the porch: thicker still was the talking. David alone was silent. He was the sole ear in a close texture of words. And it was raining. The guests at _The Villa_ were profuse in lamentation of the weather. “What a day!” “Won’t it ever stop?” they said. They were insincere. They were glad of the rain. It held them close together on the porch where they could talk, where there was much warm human flesh to talk to. David did not need to listen. He sat very still and looked beyond the porch. _The Villa_ stood on the brow of a hill above the lake. His eyes fell down a flaunting cornpatch; the carriage road dawdled within low shrubs and the lake cut out, lead-blue and harried by the rain. The trees were gray with the rain, the tall grasses of August gleamed with it and swayed. David saw it sweep, like a phalanx, over the water. His senses dozed in the rain and the voices. The harsh note of a chair creaking was a rare break in cadence. Over the eaves of the porch, the drops gathered and broke in a quick flurry; there was a pause while the drops held, swelled, burst again. He saw beyond the two great elms flanking the house how the clouds were a veering maze of mist, how the lighter gray swerved down from the dank mass and filmed in shivering water toward the lake. He saw in the pent gray faces of his neighbors how the words gathered and broke forth. This passion of talk was a new element to David. He sensed its kinship with the play of the clouds which he knew. His mother had been silent. In Mr. Devitt’s shop where he worked, the boys spoke when there was need. He had heard girls chatter chiefly from a distance. He dwelt on two planes. Part of him moved beyond the hotel porch. It shared the drowse of nature, it was drenched in the warm rain. The trees were subdued and satisfied. They were like women after words of love, they were like women glowing while love worked on them. The ground was still. When the sun came the ground of the woods rang with life. Now there was quiet. David thought of this: how the earth watched the trees, was slumberous and drank its potion. This was the forward part of David. In the back of his mind was the porch and the parlor where the children had been banished.