to
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 no wet clothes clinging to her limbs, gave her the joy of a
child doing a naughty thing. She swam out of her depth, then scared at
her own adventure, swam in again as the sun rose.

She dashed into her two garments, climbed the wall, and scurried back
to the house. All her dejection, and feverish uncertainty were gone;
she felt keen, fresh, terribly hungry, and stealing into