Chapter 16

The Wood was gradually growing darker. It had been almost brilliant
during a part of the afternoon because the bareness of the branches let
in the wintry sun. There were no leaves to keep it out and there had
been a rare, chill blue sky. All seemed cold blue sky where it was not
brown or sodden yellow fern and moss. The trunks of the trees looked
stark and the tall, slender white stems of the birches stood out here
and there among the darker growth like ghosts who were sentinels. It was
always a silent place and now its stillness seemed even added to by the
one sound which broke it--the sound of sobbing--sobbing--sobbing.

It had been going on for some time. There had stolen through the narrow
trodden pathway a dark slight figure and this had dropped upon the
ground under a large tree which was one of a group whose branches had
made a few months ago a canopy of green where birds had built nests and
where one nightingale had sung night after night to the moon.

Later--Robin had said to herself--she would go to the cottage, and she
would sit upon the hearth and lay her head on Mrs. Bennett's knee and
they would cling together and sob and talk of the battlefields and the
boys lying dead there. But she had no thought of saying any other thing
to her, because there was nothing left to say. She had said nothing to
Dr. Redcliff; she had only sat listening to him and feeling her eyes
widening as she tried to follow and understand what he was saying in
such a grave, low-toned cautious way--as if he himself were almost
afraid as he went on. What he said would once have been strange and
wonderful, but now it was not, because wonder had gone out of the
world. She only seemed to sit stunned before the feeling that now the
dream was not a sacred secret any longer and there grew within her, as
she heard, a wild longing to fly to the Wood as if it were a living
human thing who would hear her and understand--as if it would be like
arms enclosing her. Something would be there listening and she could
talk to it and ask it what to do.

She had spoken to it as she staggered down the path--she had cried out
to it with wild broken words, and then when she heard nothing she had
fallen down upon the earth and the sobbing--sobbing--had begun.

"Donal!" she said. "Donal!" And again, "Donal!" over and over. But
nothing answered, for even that which had been Donal--with the heavenly
laugh and the blue in his gay eyes and the fine, long smooth hands--had
been blown to fragments in a field somewhere--and there was nothing
anywhere.

* * * * *

She had heard no footsteps and she was sobbing still when a voice spoke
at her side--the voice of some one standing near.

"It is