" As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it.

Under the oak, too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever.

"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince Andrew.

" Let others--the young--yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life, our life is finished!" A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree.