Had there been a hard surface beneath us, I might have regretted the impulse on which I had left my boots—though it would have been equally correct to say they had left me—but the moss was soft and deep, and though it gave a curious tingling sensation (which I forgot subsequently) it was otherwise a very soft and pleasant carpet on which to tread.
The wood which we were now entering must have stretched (as I calculated) for about forty miles along the great valley which lay within the ridge of coastwise hills which we had to reach and cross to gain our objective. It was probably about ten miles wide at the point at which we were attempting to pass it.
We had gone about half-a-mile at a very quick walk, the trees not being sufficiently close to obstruct us seriously, when my companion asked me if there were nothing that occurred to me as unusual in the scene around us.
I had not thought of anything. I had been occupied by the beauty and variety of the trees which we were passing, but as she asked I felt it, and shuddered.
“Yes,” I said, “it is the silence.”
She answered, “Silence is good; but it is the cause of the silence. The trees live, but they do not move. I think that wind is forbidden. Besides the trees and the moss, it seems that we are the only creatures that live.”
And I knew, as her thought reached me, that she was right. There was no moving life in the trees, nor in the air, nor in the moss beneath us. I searched, and if I could have found the smallest insect, I think it would have broken the spell which oppressed me, as I realised the isolation in which we moved.
I stood, and hesitated. I was ashamed of my thought, but at last I gave it. “I do not want to go farther.”
“Do you feel it?” she answered, “I felt it sooner.”
“It is not that I fear,” I answered, “there seems no cause to fear in so great a peace, but I find it hard to go forward.”
“Yes,” she said, “the Dwellers may not be here, but I think that they have left their wills to protect it. It is a new thing to me. Shall we yield, and turn, or resist it?”
I hesitated for a moment, for I felt a curious disinclination to go farther, beneath which there was a stubborn unwillingness to turn back with so little of reason to justify it.
“It must be a long way round,” I thought at last, “and it might be even more perilous. You shall decide.”
She answered readily, “Then we will go forward. I will go first, if you will, because I am the more sensitive to the power against which we shall be contending, and I may also be more resolute to resist it.
“I know that you were trying to decide in this way, though you found it hard to do so.
“My own decision is not because it is a long way round, which is of little moment, nor because it may be more dangerous to take that way, for it may be less so, which is more probable. But I think that these were not your reasons. They were only those which your mind supplied, as best it might, to support your preference.
“You know, as I do, that there may be great danger if we go forward, though you cannot understand what it may be. Therefore you fear it. But you have within you a spirit which has been trained to conflict by the conditions of your life, and which is reluctant to turn aside from a chosen path, and especially so when the danger is not immediately evident, nor physically apparent.
“My own reason is different. I feel that these woods are held by a power which will turn us back, if it be sufficient to do so. I suppose this power to derive from the Dwellers, because I know them to be supreme in these regions, and I cannot think that there could be any other whose wills could contend against my own so stubbornly. But it is in my thought that if we accept defeat here we may as well abandon our attempt at once. It is your nature to depend upon weapons for your protection, and you have none. It is mine to depend upon the assertion of my own will, and if, at the first challenge, we confess defeat without effort, in what confidence may we continue? We have this to think also. The Dwellers have much knowledge which is not ours, and many powers, but of the issue of such a conflict neither we nor they have had any experience.
“I supposed that the meeting of last night would resolve it, for I believed that my own people had determined to go straight forward, and that the Dwellers were resolute not to move aside to allow it. But the appearance of the lizards between them caused my people to halt of their own will, and the issue was not contested in that way.”
Then she went forward, and I followed closely behind her. Peace was round us, and a dreamlike beauty, golden-green, and deep blue sky where the trees showed it. The stillness could be felt.
As the body feels when a great wind meets it, so that, though it stoop against it, it can make no headway, so was the pressure against my mind to hold me backward.
My companion gave me no thought, and I saw her go on slowly,
