nce been as a little girl. She
would be in the air there, she would be able to breathe, to get rid of
this feverishness. With the unhappy pleasure of a spoiled child taking
its revenge, she took care to leave her bedroom door open, so that her
maid would wonder where she was, and perhaps be anxious, and make them
anxious. Slipping through the moonlit picture gallery on to the landing,
outside her father's sanctum, whence rose the stone staircase leading to
the roof, she began to mount. She was breathless when, after that
unending flight of stairs she emerged on to the roof at the extreme
northern end of the big house, where, below her, was a sheer drop of a
hundred feet. At first she stood, a little giddy, grasping the rail that
ran round that garden of lead, still absorbed in her brooding, rebellious
thoughts. Gradually she lost consciousness of everything save the scene
before her. High above all neighbouring houses, she was almost appalled
by the majesty of what she saw. This night-clothed city, so remote and
dark, so white-gleaming and alive, on whose purple hills and valleys grew
such myriad golden flowers of light, from whose heart came this deep
incessant murmur--could it possibly be the same city through which she
had been walking that very day! From its sleeping body the supreme
wistful spirit had emerged in dark loveliness, and was low-flying down
there, tempting her. Barbara turned round, to take in all that amazing
prospect, from the black glades of Hyde Park, in front, to the powdery
white ghost of a church tower, away to the East. How marvellous was this
city of night! And as, in presence of that wide darkness of the sea
before dawn, her spirit had felt little and timid within her--so it felt
now, in face of this great, brooding, beautiful creature, whom man had
made. She singled out the shapes of the Piccadilly hotels, and beyond
them the palaces and towers of Westminster and Whitehall; and everywhere
the inextricable loveliness of dim blue forms and sinuous pallid lines of
light, under an indigo-dark sky. Near at hand, she could see plainly the
still-lighted windows, the motorcars gliding by far down, even the tiny
shapes of people walking; and the thought that each of them meant someone
like herself, seemed strange.

Drinking of this wonder-cup, she began to experience a queer
intoxication, and lost the sense of being little; rather she had the
feeling of power, as in her dream at Monkland.