The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now and again he would look down passages between the trees—narrow pillared corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn, causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At a bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path. “I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,” he said to himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly: “Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make a brown mist, a brume?” She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted. “H’m? Yes, I see what you mean.” She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner. “That’s the larch fog,” he laughed. “Yes,” she said, “you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.” He shook the tree on which his hand was laid. “It laughs through its teeth,” he said, smiling, playing with everything he touched. As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped, picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if pleased by a coincidence. “Last year,” she said, “the larch-fingers stole both my pins—the same ones.” He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always felt a deep sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he hated Helena. They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley—one of those wide hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry held loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark blue dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena’s dress. They walked on a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for shelter. “Here,” said Byrne—“here is our tent—a black tartar’s—ready pitched.”