once more for its secrets. The slender root sustained it. It had stood alone, unbraced and unguarded, with the least sustenance from and connection to its nurturer, the earth, and yet it had survived for hundreds of years. With her fists she wiped away the tears that rolled unbidden from her eyes. Perhaps she was beginning to understand. Perhaps she should cry more often. She held her watch up to the pale moonlight. It was 7:45. She ran to the Jeep and jammed it into low gear, roared down the dirt road without regard for how she was jarred back and forth. Joe would be very angry if she weren't there when he got home. By the time she pulled into their driveway it was 8:30. Joe was obviously home. The lights she had left burning were off. Only the lights in his studio were on. He had to be working up there, waiting for her to come home. He would never believe she had been out to the Witch Tree at this time of the night. His car must be in the garage. Becky shuddered. There would be a terrible fight about where she'd been and the condition of the house. There would be tears about her empty easel, about his disappointment with her. There would be the anger for wasting her time and not disciplining herself the way an artist must, and then the ultimate forgiveness she would grant him for his loss of self-control. She wheeled the Jeep in front of the house and ran inside. “Joe!” she called, but no one answered. She turned on the living room lights and ran through the room, then quickly up the stairs and across the bridge to his studio where the only lights burned. She paused for a moment to catch her breath and regain control of herself. Then she pushed the door open gently so as not to startle him. “Joe,” she called softly into the enormous room. There was no answer. The studio was full of Joe's work, his paintings and sketches and paints and brushes and empty canvases awaiting his ideas. She found the studio extraordinarily depressing and rarely went in except to clean it.