But, clearest of all, she saw the manner of their going; for she recognized in their tumult of escape by the window open at the top, the same wide "looping circles"--spirals as it seemed--that she had seen upon the lawn those weeks ago when Sanderson had talked. The room once more was empty. In the collapse that followed, she heard her husband's voice, as though coming from some great distance. Her own replies she heard as well. Both were so strange and unlike their normal speech, the very words unnatural. "What is it, dear? Why do you wake me _now_ ?" And his voice whispered it with a sighing sound, like wind in pine boughs. "A moment since something went past me through the air of the room. Back to the night outside it went." Her voice, too, held the same note as of wind entangled among too many leaves. "My dear, it _was_ the wind." "But it called, David. It was calling _you_--by name!" "The air of the branches, dear, was what you heard. Now, sleep again, I beg you, sleep." "It had a crowd of eyes all through and over it--before and behind--" Her voice grew louder. But his own in reply sank lower, far away, and oddly hushed. "The moonlight, dear, upon the sea of twigs and boughs in the rain, was what you saw." "But it frightened me. I've lost my God--and you--I'm cold as death!" "My dear, it is the cold of the early morning hours. The whole world sleeps. Now sleep again yourself." He whispered close to her ear. She felt his hand stroking her. His voice was soft and very soothing. But only a part of him was there; only a part of him was speaking; it was a half-emptied body that lay beside her and uttered these strange sentences, even forcing her own singular choice of words. The horrible, dim enchantment of the trees was close about them in the room--gnarled, ancient, lonely trees of winter, whispering round the human life they loved. "And let me sleep again," she heard him murmur as he settled down among the clothes, "sleep back into that deep, delicious peace from which you called me." His dreamy, happy tone, and that look of youth and joy she discerned upon his features even in the filtered moonlight, touched her again as with the spell of those shining, mild green presences. It sank down into her. She felt sleep grope for her. On the threshold of slumber one of those strange vagrant voices that loss of consciousness lets loose cried faintly in her heart-- "There is joy in the Forest over one sinner that--" Then sleep took her before she had time to realize even that she was vilely parodying one of her most precious texts, and that the irreverence was ghastly.