"Fatalism is a doctrine which does not recognise the determination of all events by causes in the ordinary sense; holding, on the contrary, that a certain foreordained result will come about, no matter what may be done to prevent it...."

Barbara's first action on reaching home was to go into the library and consult a dictionary to find out the exact meaning of a word which she had been repeating to herself ever since she hurried out of Mrs. Savage's rooms. She had many new ideas to fit into place, but dominating them all was this sense of hopelessness and inevitability. Whether you walked on the north pavement or the south was preordained; if you asserted your supposed free will and crossed from south to north, even that pitiful show of independence was preordained; God was still pushing you from behind and, probably, laughing at you—as you laughed at the kitten which stared at you with head on one side and wondering eyes, to know what you had done with its reel of cotton. It was preordained that you should play with that kitten for a moment in eternity and that for a fraction of a moment you should hide the reel. Fatalism was paralyzing to the soul, destroying all effort. Nothing mattered any longer....

It was Summertown who had made her a fatalist. His life had been mapped out until all initiative was taken away. He had died very gallantly—but he could not help himself; he had lived rather dissolutely, but he could not help himself. There had been a tragedy and a disappointment in his life; but the tragedy was set beforehand, and Destiny decided whether he was to be made or broken by it, whether he was to avert or contribute to it. Fatalism was the negation of morality. It allowed of neither right nor wrong, only necessity.

If there were neither right nor wrong, Barbara had no cause for self-reproach. Destiny had arranged that Jack should come into her life; that he should anger her and that she should try to punish him; in obeying Destiny she was not to blame. But, if fatalism relieved her of responsibility, it also robbed her of resistance; she could do nothing to shield herself from anything that Destiny might have in store for her. Nothing had shielded Summertown when he came within range of the first German bullet....

And the course of Destiny could be laid bare. Though for long she had not believed it, she and the others had known what would happen to Summertown, as Mrs. Savage now knew what would happen to her.... And she had been afraid to insist on being told. All her life she had fancied that she was a free spirit with head and hands to make herself what she pleased. Now she was content to be told that, on the whole, she was preordained to be happy.... Or so Mrs. Savage had thought fit to say; she might be hiding something; there was no obvious reason why she refused her fee.

"My darling, haven't you gone up to dress yet?" said Lady Crawleigh at the door of the library. "You'll be so dreadfully late!"

Barbara knew that whether she was late or punctual had been preordained. Her mother probably would not believe that; she would feel that every one had enough free will not to keep other people waiting for dinner.

"I think I should like to dine in bed," she answered wearily.

"Aren't you feeling well?"

"I'm not equal to meeting a lot of people."

"But it's only George and the O'Ranes and one or two more. They'll be so disappointed. And it's the first time Sonia's dined here since she was married."

Barbara got up and walked reluctantly to the door. It was preordained, then, that she should dine.... Once you accepted predestination, there was no limit to its application. Her maid wanted her to wear a grey dress, but she preferred something else, anything else; her choice fell on a blue, but she was conscious that she was compelled from outside to choose one rather than the other. She could not be troubled to decide what jewellery she would wear; Destiny must do a little work, must choose for her. She felt that she was scoring a point against Destiny, when she refused to wear any; but Destiny had decided beforehand that she was to have this moment's struggle before deciding not to wear any....

Her maid was almost in tears at such indifference.

"You don't do me credit, my lady, to-night," she complained.

"Don't I? I'm sorry, Merton! But I'm tired, I can't take the trouble."

"Your hair, my lady——"

"I think I shall cut it off! It's only a bother."

"My lady, your beautiful hair?"

"No, I shan't cut it off. It's too much trouble. Everything's too much trouble."

She hardly looked at herself in the glass before going downstairs, though she knew that Sonia O'Rane would have spent hours in preparing herself. But it was preordained whether she looked well ... or wanted to look well.

Throughout dinner her mind struggled under the incubus. Predestination peeped round every conversational corner, explaining and stultifying everything. When O'Rane spoke sympathetically of Jim Loring's death, she answered almost callously that it must have been preordained. Since leaving Mrs. Savage, she had tried vainly to discover some point in which she was superior to an animal that was born at the stockman's bidding, to be killed for lamb or shorn for wool or kept to bear other sheep at the stockman's bidding and ultimately killed for mutton.

"You see, I believe in Destiny," Barbara explained. "Destiny meant you to be wounded and Jim to be killed and some one else to be untouched. If Destiny didn't mean me to be burned, I could put my finger in the flame of that candle. Everything we do——"

O'Rane shook his head and laughed.

"You don't believe that, Lady Barbara. You don't believe that you've no choice whether you're good or bad, kind or unkind—that you're helpless."

"I am waiting for you to find fault with my logic," she answered.

"I won't try. I wish I could see you, though! You sound serious, but in the old days, when I looked at you, there was a sort of etherealized smile——"

"Ah, don't!" Barbara shivered.

"——It gave you away.... I'm sorry! I'm getting so used to being blind that I forget other people's feelings.... Your voice is quite serious, and I'm getting wonderful at voices. Shall I tell you something about yours? A change I've noticed?" He waited to assure himself that they were not overheard. "Lady Barbara, are you very unhappy about something? It's not curiosity; I want to help, if I can. When you're blind, you become a bit of an impressionist. If any one asked me to describe you, I'm glad to say that I can still remember exactly what you used to look like, but, when I describe you to myself, I get a massing of colours, a glorious freedom of line that no one else might recognize for you. Your voice would make me crowd my canvas with red, blood red. Pain is always red to me. And you give me the impression of horrible pain. More than that, I'm afraid you've giving in to it. I don't ask for your confidence, but, if I'm right, I should like to help."

Barbara was too much startled to do more than thank him and say that she was not very well.

"Ah, that was a pity!" he sighed.

"But I can't help it, can I?"

"It was a pity to say that. You've covered my picture with a thin grey-yellow wash—Thames water—which dulls my colours."

"Do you mean that I'm not speaking the truth?" she asked stiffly.

"I had no right to say what I did," he answered apologetically. "But you sounded so heart-broken."

"Well, in addition to being not very well, I'm not particularly happy. Life's such a hopeless thing, if you can't control it."

"And you say that, Lady Barbara, with your brains and your looks and your health and your money——"

"Even if I've got them all, they needn't make me happy.... They don't! Sometimes I feel that, if I could give them all up, if I could make one gigantic sacrifice, I might be happy.... You're not sorry to have been fighting, are you? But I wonder what equal sacrifice a woman can make."

"Ah, to die with credit is the easiest thing in the world," O'Rane answered, as he pushed back his chair.

When she was half-way upstairs, Barbara excused herself and went to her room. Sonia and her husband were so happy that their happiness hurt her; she grudged it them. There was no reason under heaven why she should not be as happy, but Destiny had not yet ordained it. Perhaps Destiny had decided that she should see it for a moment and then have it snatched from her. It was a variant of her old fear that she would have to marry Jack and then fall in love with some one else; then she had regarded such a fate as her punishment. Destiny, she now felt, did not concern itself with rewards and punishments; it was altogether too arbitrary.

She lay on her bed without undressing and thought over the day's emotions. Of all that she had done she only regretted her momentary panic when she ran away from Mrs. Savage; and, the more she regretted it, the more determined she became to go again and to demand full answers to all her questions. As soon as her mind was made up, she felt better. People might call her superstitious, gullible or anything else they pleased, but they should not say that she was a coward. Jumping up from the bed, she tidied her hair and went down to the drawing-room in time to find Sonia saying good-bye.

"Oh, don't go yet," said Barbara. "I had such a headache that I had to lie down, but it's better now. I haven't had a moment with you the whole evening."

"We've promised to go to a party," Sonia answered. "To-night's the hundred and fiftieth performance of Eric Lane's play, and he's giving a supper on the stage. Why don't you come too?"

"I haven't been asked. And I don't know him."

"Oh, that doesn't matter! I don't know him, but David was up at Oxford with him."

"I think I'll wait until I've met him. You're not going too, George?"

"I'm bound for the same debauch, I'm afraid. Barbara, will you dine with me some time to meet him? I'll try to fix a night and telephone to you in the morning."

"I shall love that."

She went to bed, feeling that she would sleep; but her nerves were unsettled by the memory of her encounter with Mrs. Savage. After trying to read, she jumped up and began walking about the room. She was never conscious of having gone outside, but some time later she found herself in the hall, lying on a table with a rug round her. Lady Crawleigh was standing over her with a white face and frightened eyes; her maid hovered in the background, with her hair in curl-papers and a grotesque mackintosh over her nightgown. Farther away stood an unmistakable policeman with close-cropped black hair and a line of white at the top of his forehead. Barbara reflected that she had never before seen a policeman without his helmet. Then she sat up and stared round her.

"What's happened?"

"My darling child, lie still," Lady Crawleigh implored. "How do you feel?"

"I'm all right."

"You were walking in your sleep. Oh, Babs, you've given us all such a fright! D'you know, you'd actually got outside.... Anything might have happened to you!"

Barbara looked from her mother to the policeman.

"Outside?" she repeated.

"You'd unlocked the door and pushed back both bolts—Aston's quite sure he bolted top and bottom——"

"And I went out like this?" Barbara interrupted. She pulled up the end of the rug and found that she was barefooted and in her nightdress. "I can't remember.... I went to bed; I do remember that it was very hot and that I walked about the room...."

The policeman coughed and prepared to retire. Lady Crawleigh despatched the maid for her purse, but Barbara was too much dazed even to thank him. A dream which had been wonderfully vivid a moment before was fading from her recollection, driven out scene by scene at the sound of her mother's frightened voice. She had fancied that she was again sitting with Mrs. Savage and that the flicker of kindliness which had for a moment lighted up the gaunt face and smouldering dark eyes was once more visible. In another moment everything would have been told....

"I suppose I was going for a walk. What's the time?"

"It's one o'clock," answered Lady Crawleigh. "I sat up to finish some writing.... My darling child, are you sure you're all right now?"

Barbara stood for a moment to test her strength and then walked to the stairs.

"Yes, thanks. I'll go back to bed now. I'm sorry to have frightened everybody."

"I'll come with you, Babs. If you want anything in the night——"

"I'm really all right!" Barbara was so much exhausted that this time she knew she would be able to sleep. She did not know, however, what she might say in her sleep. "You can lock both doors, mother; and I couldn't throw myself out of the window, if I tried. I couldn't sleep, if I had any one in the room; I should feel I was being watched."

"But just for to-night——"

"I shan't go to bed, unless you do what I ask."

Lady Crawleigh knew well when it was useless to argue, and Barbara went up alone. Mrs. Savage had called her; if the dream had not been so rudely disturbed, she would have been able to remember the form of the call as she still remembered its urgency. But that hardly mattered now; she was only strengthened in her determination to go back to Knightsbridge in the morning. She fell asleep, happier than she had been for a year. Lady Crawleigh peeped into the room once or twice during the night, but Barbara did not stir until the telephone-bell rang by her bed-side at half-past nine. A strange male voice enquired for her and seemed more than usually anxious to be certain of her identity.

"We are Furnivall and Morton, solicitors," said the voice. "It is Mr. Morton speaking. Is that Lady Barbara Neave?"

"Yes."

"You are—Lady Barbara Neave? You are acquainted with a client of ours, Mrs. Savage."

The combination of Mrs. Savage and a slightly hectoring solicitor who insisted on speaking to her at half-past nine disconcerted Barbara.

"What Mrs. Savage do you mean?" she asked.

"Mrs. Savage of Knightsbridge. You called on her yesterday. I am sorry to say that there has been a misunderstanding, and our client is in a position of some difficulty. She gave me your name, and, after thinking the matter over very carefully, I felt that you were the person who could be of most service to her. Mrs. Savage assured me that you would do anything in your power to help her, so I need not apologize for troubling you at this rather unseasonable hour."

The voice paused, and Barbara found herself trembling. It was not blackmail to tell her that she would do anything in her power to help some one but the tone could be so confident as to be menacing. Barbara had never been brought into contact with solicitors; she knew from books that it was prudent and legitimate to refer them to one's own solicitors, but it would argue an uneasy conscience to be so summary before she had given Mr. Morton time to explain himself.

"What has happened?" she asked.

"Some malicious person has been writing letters to the Home Office," explained Mr. Morton, "and the long and the short of it is that it's necessary for us to produce evidence as to character. If you would be kind enough——"

"But I don't know her," Barbara protested. "I've only met her twice."

"That does not matter. One of the charges against our client is that she trades on the credulity of ignorant people who have been made unbalanced by the war and that, when she has got these same ignorant people into her grasp, she extorts money from them. You and I know that such a charge is grotesquely untrue. Our client had devoted her whole life to the study of what I may conveniently call 'the occult'; she has never advertised or solicited business—her peculiar powers have made that unnecessary—and those who have consulted her, so far from being credulous or ignorant people, are drawn to her by a common interest in a study which, though still in its infancy, is capable of almost infinite development." Barbara fancied that Mr. Morton must be reading aloud the draft of the defence which he had prepared for Mrs. Savage. "We feel that the Home Office will take a different view of the case, when confronted with a few of the people whom the anonymous informant is good enough to call ignorant and credulous. I am therefore collecting a few statements from some of the very many people who consulted our client. I shall be glad to know that you will allow me to call on you and suggest to you the general form in which these statements are being drawn."

Barbara was vaguely relieved to find that Mrs. Savage was once more on the defensive and that the solicitor with the ominous voice was asking favours rather than uttering threats. She would have liked to help, if it had been possible; a year before she would undoubtedly have responded; but now she dreaded the publicity of a newspaper report, and there would be a scene with her father to which she felt wholly unequal. The common sense of the world, too, would only rank her with the credulous ignorant.

"You can get other people who know her better, surely?" Barbara suggested.

"I want to get every one I can," answered Mr. Morton. "Your name, if I may say so, will carry a great deal of weight. We wish to show the Home Office the kind of people who went to our client."

Barbara was quite convinced by now that she did not want to be known as "the kind of person" who consulted Mrs. Savage, though in an hour's time she would have been on her way to Knightsbridge.

"I think I'd sooner be left out of it," she said.

"I'm afraid we can't afford to spare you."

"But you can't make me!"

There was a pause, followed by a warning cough, and Mr. Morton began to speak more slowly and emphatically.

"If the Home Office authorities are ill-advised enough to recommend a prosecution, it will be necessary for you to attend. We want to avoid that, of course; we want to satisfy the authorities—without any unpleasantness—that they are under a misapprehension. A statement from you——"

"But would it be published?"

"That we should have to decide later. Our client has also been wantonly attacked by certain papers, and it is our business to see that she is cleared of all suspicion."

"I shan't say anything, if it's going to be published in the papers," Barbara rejoined obstinately.

Mr. Morton hesitated again and became even more impressive.

"I'm afraid—you'll understand, of course, that this is in no sense a threat—I'm afraid that you'll regret it later. If we're unable to settle the matter out of hand, if there's a prosecution——"

"But I've really nothing to do with it! You can't drag me in!" Barbara cried.

"Have you never heard of a subpoena?"

A threat, like any other challenge, roused Barbara to combat, however ill and reluctant she might be; and, when roused, her first act was to throw aside prudence like a cloak that was fettering her sword-arm.

"Oh, I know you can make me come, if you want to," she said. "If you and Mrs. Savage think it's worth while. I've only met her twice—yesterday and about two years ago. She hasn't forgotten the first meeting. You can ask her if she thinks it's worth while."

Barbara hung up the receiver and lay back in bed, breathing quickly. Her mother came in a moment later to enquire how she was and found her with flushed cheeks and dilated pupils.

"My darling, what's the matter?" she cried.

"Oh, I'm worried! Everything worries me!" answered Barbara with a catch in her breath. "Oh, that telephone again!"

This time it was George Oakleigh, and his tone of gentle concern worried her until she wanted to scream and beg to be left alone.

"Good-morning, Barbara. I tried to get through to you before, but your line was engaged. I hope you're better this morning. Well, I went to Eric Lane's party last night after leaving you; I've made him promise to dine with me on Thursday, it's his only free evening for weeks. Is that any good to you? Even if you don't like his play, I think you'll like him."

Barbara felt that, if by pressing a button she could compass Lane's death, she would press it cheerfully and promptly. Then perhaps she would escape having him thrust down her throat every few hours.

"George, it's sweet of you," she said, straining to speak graciously, "but I don't know that I shall feel up to it. All my nerves seem to have gone wrong."

"I'm so sorry; I thought he might amuse you. Would you like to leave it open? Thursday. He's dining with me in any event. If you ring me up between now and then.... Take care of yourself, dear Barbara; you're too precious to lose."

"Oh, I'm not going to die young," she laughed nervously. "The gods don't love me enough for that."

As she put the telephone away again, Lady Crawleigh came back to the bed; she had only troubled to gather one thing from the conversation, and that was the rare admission from Barbara's own lips that she was too ill to accept an invitation.

"Darling, I thought that after last night it would be a good thing for you to see Dr. Gaisford," she said. "Perhaps he can give you a tonic——"

"Oh, I don't want to see a doctor," Barbara interrupted. "My wretched body's all right. No doctor in the world can do me any good."

"But you're not yourself at all. And you've never walked in your sleep before. There must be something a little wrong, when you begin doing that."

Barbara said nothing, because she felt that her nerves were tingling and that she might break out with something so unnaturally irritable and rude that Dr. Gaisford would be summoned without the chance of an appeal. It was absurd to talk about sleep-walking; it was not in sleep that she had walked down the stairs and through the door-way. A trance it might fairly be called; but, where memory failed, instinct told her that she was obeying a call; she had no doubt that, when the policeman stopped her, she was on her way to Mrs. Savage; and she would there have heard something—perhaps everything....

"I was only restless," said Barbara at length, pulling the bed-clothes about with an impatient hand.

"You're not thinking of getting up, are you?"

Since she could not go back to Knightsbridge, Barbara was undecided what to do. At least she had to remain within reach of the telephone, for Mr. Morton might reopen communication at any moment; and she had to remain at home to secure that, if Mrs. Savage made a personal appeal, it should not be intercepted this time by Lord Crawleigh. Bed was as good a place as any other....

Mr. Morton left her undisturbed, but two days later she heard the last of Mrs. Savage. At some period of her wandering career May Tennigen, sometimes known as "Madame Hilary" or "Mrs. Savage," had become a naturalized American; the Home Office, working sympathetically with the War Office, which suspected her activities, decided to dispense with a prosecution and to return her to the country of her adoption. When Barbara read of the deportation, she was first relieved and then plunged into despair. Her last contact with certainty had been broken. Lady Crawleigh came in to find her crying in her sleep; later she began to talk feverishly and in the morning Dr. Gaisford was summoned.

"She was dreadfully overworked in the hospital," explained Lady Crawleigh. "And I don't think she's got over it yet. You know how naughty she is as a rule, when she's told to stay in bed; now she won't get up. She says there's no point in getting up, that there's nothing to do. She says that, if she's fated to get up—or something like that.... She says she's got no will of her own, that we've none of us got wills. That from Barbara!"

The doctor's task was easy in one respect, for Barbara did whatever she was told. If Destiny contrived a man and crossed the thread of his life with hers and made him a physician and sent him with a stethoscope and a fountain-pen to write prescriptions, what was the use of protesting? She could take the medicine—or leave it untouched; that had been arranged for her beforehand. Everything was arranged beforehand, but she had lost the means of finding out what Destiny had in store for her....

"Is she worried about anything?" asked the doctor.

"Not that I know of," Lady Crawleigh answered.

Since the time eighteen months before, when Barbara said bluntly, "Mother, I'm not going to marry Jack," they had not discussed him. When he was reported "missing," Barbara never commented on her mother's letter, even with a phrase of conventional regret; she did not seem to discuss him with any one, she had rejected her aunt's sympathy, and, if she were breaking her heart for him, it was strange that even in sleep she never referred to him.

When the doctor left, Lady Crawleigh resolved that Barbara must be coaxed into saying why she was so miserable. But, if it was hard to corkscrew anything out of her when she was obstinately rebellious, it was harder still when she cowered like a beaten dog. For three nights she had lain moaning "Happy ... I do want to be happy.... Won't any one make me happy?" Lady Crawleigh alluded vaguely to restless nights, and the doctor prescribed a sedative.

For the first time in more than twelve months Barbara slept peacefully and awoke with the memory of a delightful dream. After the disturbance of her encounter with Mrs. Savage, her memory had at last gone back to the day when she fainted in the train. Twice in the night a voice was heard speaking to her very softly, with a child's confiding gentleness; then the child himself appeared, standing over her and holding out both hands until she got up from the grass and walked with him. She found that she, too, was a child, with bare arms and legs and her hair hanging loose and blowing into her face until he brushed it aside and kissed her. They walked with their arms twined about each other's waists, and, when Barbara looked wonderingly at their blue ephods, he said "The Blue Bird," and she answered, "Of course! The Blue Bird" and knew that he was come to bring her happiness.

They set out seriously, for there was no time to be lost, through a long narrow garden built like a cliff road, terrace under terrace, with a silver ribbon of water turning in a cascade from the end of each terrace on to the one below. There were fig trees on either side, and he made her sit down in the shade while he gathered the warm soft figs and tossed them into her lap.

"Spain," she said. "We must go on."

"Aren't you happy here?" he asked.

"Yes. I love you."

"And I love you."

"But we must go on," she repeated.

He bent forward on one knee and kissed her feet.

"You are tired. Rest here, where you are happy."

"I am very happy, but we must go on."

He stood up and lifted her in his arms until she laid her cheek against his and clasped her hands round his neck.

"I am too heavy," she protested. "You are only a child."

"I cannot let you hurt your feet on all these stones," he answered.

"You are very good to me."

"I love you. If you will stay here, I will take care of you always. You will be happy. You will never be hurt. I will watch over you, and no one shall come near you."

She looked from under the shade of the fig-tree on to the silver ribbon of water falling in cascades from one terrace to another.

"No one is near us. We are alone in the world."

"And I love you; and you love me."

She struggled out of his arms and darted forward.

"We must go on."

"When you are happy?"

"Yes. I have to go on. Who are you?"

"I cannot tell you. I have not lived till now."

"I never lived till you told me that you loved me. Kiss me! Kiss my eyes! I love you and I am happy.... But I have to go on. You are a child."

"Like you. Let me kiss your hand."

"My eyes! Kiss my eyes! They were aching, but you have made me happy...."

Barbara was still speaking when she awoke. Her arms were thrown wide, as though she were waiting to embrace some one, and she heard her own whispered "happy."

The door creaked. A wedge of yellow light advanced, broadening, into the room and slowly climbed the opposite wall. Through half-closed eyes she saw her mother; and, though she shut her eyes, she could feel that her mother was crossing the room, standing by her, watching her. Then the door creaked again. Barbara sighed with relief. In another moment sleep would have been banished, but now she might hope to recapture it. Spain ... The Generalife Garden ... Sunshine hot on her face ... Black stains of shadow from the fig trees ... The sweet, creamy figs ... Quivering waves of heat flung back and up from the burning earth on to her bare ankles ... A child in blue ephod kissing her feet in adoration....

She could not remember his face. But, if she did not wake herself by thinking too hard of him, he would come back. He must come back....

The boat was hardly big enough for them both, but he sat at her feet with a bare arm round his bare legs and his other hand dipped in the water. She never knew when he got into the boat or when she got into it herself; but he was speaking, as they came in sight of the Blue Grotto, and this time she determined to see his face.

"The river is not wide enough for oars," he explained.

"I was afraid I had lost you."

"I love you. I will take wonderful care of you. You will stay?"

"We must go on."

The Blue Grotto changed to a horse-shoe doorway, through which she could see a valley of swaying corn studded with poppies. At the doorway their narrow river ended, and a ripple of water lapped and washed over the granite steps.

"I will carry you," he said. "You must not wet your feet."

"I am too heavy. You are only a child."

He laughed, and she found herself in his arms with her cheek pressed against his and one hand drawing back the hair from her eyes.

"At the end," she began, looking over the corn and poppies to a strip of white road winding out of the valley and merging in a white haze on the horizon.

"Stay with me! You are happy. And you love me."

"I love you.... But we must go on."

She ran ahead, trailing her fingers through the waving ears of corn, and looked over her shoulder. He had thrown himself on the ground, but, when she faltered back, he knelt and drew her to him.

"Stay with me! I love you!"

"If you love me, kiss me!"

She stood over him with her head thrown back until he sprang up and clasped her in his arms.

"I will never let you go!"

"You must let me go. I have to go on."

"But you are happy?"

"Yes! I am happy ... happy...."

She had run on alone, with his kiss still on her lips, and had reached the last height of the strip of white road before she awoke. She heard her own whispered "happy," but she was frightened....

Her bedroom was full of sunshine, and Barbara opened her arms to welcome it. She was sitting up, when her mother came in, turning the big illustrated pages of "The Blue Bird"; it was the last thing that she had read before going to sleep and she wanted to see again the Kingdom of the Future and the "halls of the Azure Palace, where the children wait that are yet to be born." The opalescent doors and the blue ephods of the children were still vivid to her; when she fell asleep, she had been reading of "the two holding each other by the hand and always kissing ... the Lovers," who spent "their day looking into each other's eyes, kissing and bidding each other farewell" ... because they could not be born into the world at the same time.

"Darling, you're looking better," said Lady Crawleigh.

"Yes, I had a wonderful night," answered Barbara. "I'm going to get up to-day. I'm going out. I want to be in the sun."

She laid aside the book and began her breakfast.

"Dr. Gaisford's coming to see you at twelve," Lady Crawleigh reminded her.

"Oh, we'll telephone and put him off. He'd much sooner be told that I'd gone out. But he can give me some more of that medicine; it makes me sleep. And I'm quite hungry."

She hurried through breakfast and ran into her bathroom, eager to be by herself, where she could piece together her dream before it faded from her memory. The voice of the child-lover was the voice that she had heard in the train. If he ever kissed her again, she would know him, though she seemed never to have seen his face. Perhaps she would never see him, perhaps Destiny had contrived that they should always be lovers and should never meet, perhaps this was why she had felt frightened on waking. It was absurd, but delightful. She wanted to meet her playmate.... And it was a long time to wait until she could go to bed and dream of him again.

She ran into the Park, because she had been running in the dream; it was more natural; she was a child again, in a mood of unclouded happiness. The passers-by paused to stare and smile, but she smiled back at them and waved her hand. A young officer shot by in a car, turned round and stopped to ask if he could give her a lift, as she seemed to be in a hurry. "It's only lightness of heart," she explained with dancing eyes. The officer looked wonderingly at her and drove to his club, where he described the encounter and opined that Lady Barbara Neave ("It couldn't have been any one else") had apparently gone suddenly mad.

In the Park she found O'Rane basking on a chair in the sunshine and crumpling the silky ears of his Saint Bernard. She sat down beside him, panting for breath and challenging him to guess who she was.

"I knew before you spoke," he answered. "No one else in London wears quite so many carnations to the square inch. I smelt them the moment you came within range."

"I have them sent up three times a week from the Abbey. I'm going to put one in your button-hole as a prize for being so clever."

"Oh, I can be much cleverer than that, when I try," he laughed. "Lady Barbara, either the sunshine's gone to your head—it always does with me; so much of my misspent life has been in the sun, I feel starved in England—; either that, or something very remarkable has happened to you. You've got a different voice, you're a different person. The last time——"

"Ah, don't talk about it," she interrupted. "I'm happy to-day."

"I know you are! If I painted you to-day, there'd be a riot of blue——"

"Blue? How funny!"

"The blue of a cloudless sky. That's how I see happiness. Tell me what's happened?"

"I just feel well and happy. I had a wonderful dream. I was about four, and there was a little boy with the most enchanting voice——"

O'Rane laughed and began to sing under his breath:

Good heavens! The last time I sang that song was at Oxford! A man called Sinclair—I'd been at school with him; he was killed at Neuve Chapelle; he was President ... The old Phoenix Club. Jim was there, and Jack Summertown, and George Oakleigh, and Eric Lane, the new playwright, and Jack Waring.... I suppose there's no news of him?"

"I don't think so," Barbara answered soberly. The name took away her lightness of heart and robbed the very sunshine of its glory.

"And I made a bet with Jim," said O'Rane after a moment's musing. "Tell me about your dream," he added abruptly.

"Oh, I couldn't! It's sacred! Besides, I don't remember very much about it except that he was the most adorable little boy in the world.... I was rather adorable, too, with my little bare feet. And he fell in love with me, and I fell in love with him. I had been feeling wretchedly ill and miserable, but I'm happy now. I think the only thing to do now is to find him and insist on marrying him; we should be wonderfully happy together, because I've never loved any one as I loved that child. How does one start?"

O'Rane shook his head sadly.

"We've no machinery for romance now. In the old days you'd have sat on a throne with your hair in two enormous plaits and a gold crown set with sapphires, and your father would have caused all the men in his kingdom to pass in front of you, and you'd have stepped suddenly forward, when you saw your lover, and you'd have taken him by the hand and made room for him by your side, and both of you would have lived happily ever afterwards."

"The sunshine's gone to your head, too! Why are we sitting still? I want to run about.... Mr. O'Rane, what would happen if I took off my shoes and stockings in Hyde Park?"

"You can do anything, Lady Barbara."

"Yes, but people would say that I was doing it for effect. I don't do things for effect. I do things because I want to, because I can't help myself. Long before I believed in Destiny, I felt that there was something inside me stronger than my will...."

She broke off and began thinking again of her dream. In this white sunshine it was easy to discount it, to talk of excited nerves, to trace the dream itself to the book which she had been reading; but, as she lay between sleep and waking, all had been too real to discount. Destiny had decreed the meeting, as Destiny decreed her smallest impulse.

A shadow fell across her feet. She started and looked up to find Oakleigh standing before her.

"I'm glad to see you about again," he said. "I've come to take Raney away to lunch with the Poynters. Sonia's not here yet?"

"She said she might be a few minutes late," answered O'Rane. "Lady Barbara and I have been sitting in the sun, telling each other how happy we are." O'Rane sat up to catch a sound too indistinct for the others. "And here's Sonia," he added. "We must fly, Lady Barbara, or we shall be horribly late, but won't you walk with us?"

"I'm afraid I must go back," she answered.

Barbara watched the two men walking away with Sonia between them. O'Rane was stooping to keep his fingers inside the great Saint Bernard's collar. Though he was blind, he was happier than she was; though he was blind, he had heard and recognized Sonia's footstep before she did. Some change of mood had overtaken her, and she traced it back to the moment when he asked whether she had received news of Jack....

A car was standing at the door of her house, and she found Dr. Gaisford in the hall.

"Oh, I'm so sorry! I meant to tell you I was so much better that I'd gone out," she apologized, rallying under her mother's eye.

The doctor noted the quick dilation of pupil and restless change of expression.

"As I've caught you, I may as well overhaul you," he said.

"But I'm all right now," Barbara protested.

"That's good hearing," answered Dr. Gaisford, but none the less he persevered in his examination, unmoved by a flash of petulance, which he did not fail to note, and by a spasm of nervous, contrite amiability, which he noted no less carefully. At the end he was puzzled and dissatisfied.

"You say that there was a change this morning?" he asked Lady Crawleigh as he left.

"She was a different girl. Now she's as irritable and melancholy.... Doctor, is this simply the result of overwork, or is it something more?"

It was as far as her mother would unbend towards suggesting that Barbara had anything on her mind. The doctor guessed the purpose of her question, but he felt that she was better qualified to answer it than he was.

"What do you mean by 'something more'?" he asked.

"Oh, well.... You know...."

"If we can get her body right and her nerves right," he answered, "everything else will come right. She's very highly strung, she's been taking a great deal out of herself all her life; and the war deals such an all-round blow that, if there is a weak place, we're all of us bound to feel it."

He piled vagueness on vagueness and then took his leave. Barbara was suffering from more than overexcited nerves, but he could not yet diagnose her complaint. There was no suggestion of drink, no trace of drugs, but she had been in his care for several weeks and she refused to shew any improvement. With the best intentions, a woman in her state never told a doctor the truth about herself; and any doctor who had attended Barbara since childhood knew better than to waste his time in trying to make her confide in him.

"I'll come in again on Tuesday or Wednesday," he promised Lady Crawleigh on the door-step. "Then we can talk about sending her into the country. At present I think she'd only mope."

Barbara spent the afternoon at a concert and dined at home with her parents. She went to bed immediately after dinner, drank her medicine and lay with her pillows heaped under her shoulders and the big illustrated "Blue Bird" open against her knees. When she was too tired to read any longer, she turned out the light and settled lower into the bed with her hands clasped under her head, as Peter Ibbetson had lain night after night, waiting for Mary, Duchess of Towers, "healthily tired in body, blissfully expectant in mind."

Drowsiness advanced on her from a distance, perceptibly. She dulled her senses to the far-away echo of footsteps in the house, to the shooting glint of moonlight, silver-grey on the cream-coloured blankets as her curtain bellied in the breeze, to the scent of her beloved carnations, stirred into fragrance as the curtains moved. Drowsiness deepened, but she could not fall asleep; her body lay defiantly in London, where she could still hear a drone of noises, however much she whispered that she was alone in the world—and waiting.

Even her eyes refused to remain closed, but she decided that Destiny must have forced them open, for the curtains blew apart and she saw the boy standing at the foot of her bed. His face was in shadow, and he stood with his hands clasped in front of him, looking down.

"Ah!"

At the sound of her voice he looked up, but his face was still hidden.

"My dearest, I have waited for you so long! All day!" she whispered.

"And I have waited for you all my life. I love you."

"And I love you. You will stay?"

It was his turn to shake his head; and he swept sharply towards the door. Barbara sprang out of bed and caught him by the hand.

"You shall not go!"

"I cannot stay here. You will come with me?"

"I must stay here."

"If you come with me, I will take care of you always. You will be happy."

"I must stay here."

"Before, you would not stay. Now, you will not come."

His hand slipped from her fingers, and she saw him pass through the door into a formless marble gallery. His blue ephod shone brilliantly against the grey walls, then faded and lost all colour until she could no longer see him. The gallery foreshortened and grew dark until she felt suffocated. She could see the darkness and a shadow at her feet darker still. Something was holding her back; if she could spring across the forbidding shadow.... Unless she sprang, she would be stifled. Yet to be stifled was to win peace ... or to send her mad....

When she awoke, Lady Crawleigh was once more standing over her.

"Where was I this time?" asked Barbara dully.

"Darling, you must have had a nightmare. You were calling out, so I came to see what was the matter."

"But where was I? What did I say?"

"You didn't say anything. You were just—moaning."

"They were stifling me!" she sobbed.

"No, darling, you'd only got your face among the pillows so that you couldn't breathe properly. What were you dreaming about?"

Barbara looked at her mother and summoned all her resolution to say nothing. It was wonderful to have any resolution left.... But Destiny had decided that she was to say nothing....

"I believe I'm going mad!" she whispered.

Lady Crawleigh tried to comfort her, but the girl shrank to the far side of the bed. It came to this, then, that she could no longer trust herself to go to sleep. For one night she had been in Heaven ... or in sight of Heaven.... She could not understand what had impelled her forward from the Garden and the Valley. Some one, something was waiting for her—on the lowest terrace, on the horizon where the white ribbon of road wound out of sight. Something called her away from the child in the blue ephod. And to-night Destiny had set an angel with a flaming sword to bar her path when she tried to follow him. Yet it was not an angel that she could see nor a sword that she could feel; it was an inhibition, an Authority.... Why not call it Destiny? It was something that kept her from the boy with the wistfully caressing voice, who loved her and promised to make her happy.... Something that frightened her, something that was sending her mad.

"I always said you oughtn't to sleep with all those pillows," sighed Lady Crawleigh.

"You can take them away, if you like. Good-night, mother. I hope I didn't frighten you. I'm going to sleep again now."

She waited until she was alone and then sprang out of bed. If she slept, the shadow would return ... Jack's shadow; she mustered courage to call it by its right name. You could not go to sleep, if you walked up and down, up and down all night.... At three o'clock she stripped a row of glass beads from a dress and poured them into her shoes. You could not go to sleep, if every step made you wince with pain and bite your lip to keep from crying.... When her maid came in, Barbara was asleep, with smarting eyes and tears on her cheeks, huddled at the side of her bed. One foot had a blister as big as a young pea....

She breakfasted and dressed feverishly to escape from the house before her mother was up and before the doctor could mouth his inanities about "getting the nerves right, dear child, and then everything else will be right."

"I don't expect I shall be back to lunch," she told her maid.

Soon she was in St. James' Park, because Destiny sent her there.... Government cars were racing down the Mall; a procession of officers poured into Whitehall, and by the statue of James II she saw Oakleigh and O'Rane walking arm-in-arm towards the Admiralty. George would tell her that she did not look quite so well; O'Rane would mark her voice and paint his conception of her with such blazing splashes of his "red for pain" as seeing eye had never beheld. She turned and ran up the Duke of York's Steps; Destiny had decided that she was to escape these two for once....

To meet Lady Poynter in Bond Street was to be flung against reality and made sane.

"My dear Babs! How wretched you're looking," she heard; and the shops, the taxis and the passers-by steadied to immobility. They were gloriously solid; they would frown on her, if she screamed or ran away.

"I'm feeling rather wretched," she answered in a recognizable voice. "I had rather a bad night."

"Your mother told me you were disgracefully overworked at the hospital," said Lady Poynter. "Now, what we's all got to do is to arrange a little holiday for you——"

Barbara smiled and shook her head. Yet it was no use shaking your head when Destiny had flung Lady Poynter across your path. If Destiny had arranged for her what might, for argument's sake, be called a holiday....

"I haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do," she answered.

"Then let me make it up for you! What are you doing to-night?"

"I believe mother's got some people dining."

"Well, see if you can't put them off and dine with us."

Barbara closed her eyes until she felt herself rocking. If Destiny meant her to dine with Lady Poynter....

"I should like to," she said.

"Then I shall expect you. At a quarter past eight. In Belgrave Square. It's only quite a small party. Have you met this new dramatist, Eric Lane? I've got him coming."

There was a conspiracy to force them together. George had tried, Sonia had tried. What was the good of meeting any one, if Jack's ghost intervened to thrust them apart? Eric Lane ... Eric Lane.... When she died, they would find "Eric Lane" on her heart. A neat monogram: "E. L." ... Barbara found herself trembling.... If Destiny meant her to meet Eric Lane....

"I was invited to meet him, but I couldn't go."

"You'll fall in love with him," Lady Poynter prophesied.