She stretched out her clenched fists as if to defy the pillared austerities of the vaults around her.
"Come and take me if you dare!" The challenge was unheeded.

If she had thrown herself violently against the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more breathless than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that encompassed her.
The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive vaults with her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear.

In her rage of the previous night she had not seen the wood in its profound immobility.
Left alone with the majesty of those enormous columns, she trembled and turned faint.

The silence of the hollow tree she had just quitted seemed to her less awful than the crushing presence of these mute and monstrous witnesses of her weakness.

Like a wounded quail with lowered crest and trailing wing, she crept back to her hiding place.
Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her.