“Human brains! Human knots of confusion!” he thought. “Why can’t we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted lives?”

“I simply can’t understand myself,” he thought. “Why, after being so happy with Christie, should the idea of Bob Weevil, poor, lecherous little rat, have worried me so? And why didn’t I make a scene with Gerda⁠—raise denials, anger, tears, reproaches? Why, instead of that, did I just muddy up my own wits?”

Still retaining his clasp of Gerda’s wrist, he leaned forward and pressed his bare forehead against the trunk of the ash-tree.