y,
they clipped one of his wings. After that the twilight bird, though he
lived happily enough, hopping about his cage and the terrace which served
him for exercise yard, would seem at times restive and frightened, moving
his wings as if flying in spirit, and sad that he must stay on earth.

So, too, at her window Barbara fluttered her wings; then, getting into
bed, lay sighing and tossing. A clock struck three; and seized by an
intolerable impatience at her own discomfort, she slipped a motor coat
over her night-gown, put on slippers, and stole out into the passage.
The house was very still. She crept downstairs, smothering her
footsteps. Groping her way through the hall, inhabited by the thin
ghosts of would-be light, she slid back the chain of the door, and fled
towards the sea. She made no more noise running in the dew, than a bird
following the paths of air; and the two ponies, who felt her figure pass
in the darkness, snuffled, sending out soft sighs of alarm amongst the
closed buttercups. She climbed the wall over to the beach. While she
was running, she had fully meant to dash into the sea and cool herself,
but it was so black, with just a thin edging scarf of white, and the sky
was black, bereft of lights, waiting for the day!

She stood, and looked. And all the leapings and pulsings of flesh and
spirit slowly died in that wide dark loneliness, where the only sound was
the wistful breaking of small waves. She was well used to these dead
hours--only last night, at this very time, Harbinger's arm had been round
her in a last waltz! But here the dead hours had such different faces,
wide-eyed, solemn, and there came to Barbara, staring out at them, a
sense that the darkness saw her very soul, so that it felt little and
timid within her. She shivered in her fur-lined coat, as if almost
frightened at finding herself so marvellously nothing before that black
sky and dark sea, which seemed all one, relentlessly great.... And
crouching down, she waited for the dawn to break.

It came from over the Downs, sweeping a rush of cold air on its wings,
flighting towards the sea. With it the daring soon crept back into her
blood. She stripped, and ran down into the dark water, fast growing
pale. It covered her jealously, and she set to work to swim. The water
was warmer than the air. She lay on her back and splashed, watching the
sky flush. To bathe like this in the half-dark, with her hair floating
out, and