the dark
dining-room, began rummaging for food. She found biscuits, and was still
munching, when in the open doorway she saw Lord Dennis, a pistol in one
hand and a lighted candle in the other. With his carved features and
white beard above an old blue dressing-gown, he looked impressive,
having at the moment a distinct resemblance to Lady Casterley, as though
danger had armoured him in steel.

"You call this resting!" he said, dryly; then, looking at her drowned
hair, added: "I see you have already entrusted your trouble to the
waters of Lethe."

But without answer Barbara vanished into the dim hall and up the stairs.

CHAPTER IV

While Barbara was swimming to meet the dawn, Miltoun was bathing in
those waters of mansuetude and truth which roll from wall to wall in the
British House of Commons.

In that long debate on the Land question, for which he had waited to
make his first speech, he had already risen nine times without catching
the Speaker's eye, and slowly a sense of unreality was creeping over
him. Surely this great Chamber, where without end rose the small sound
of a single human voice, and queer mechanical bursts of approbation and
resentment, did not exist at all but as a gigantic fancy of his own! And
all these figures were figments of his brain! And when he at last spoke,
it would be himself alone that he addressed! The torpid air tainted with
human breath, the unwinking stare of the countless lights, the long rows
of seats, the queer distant rounds of pale listening flesh perched up so
high, they were all emanations of himself! Even the coming and going in
the gangway was but the coming and going of little wilful parts of him!
And rustling deep down in this Titanic creature of his fancy was 'the
murmuration' of his own unspoken speech, sweeping away the puff balls of
words flung up by that far-away, small, varying voice.

Then, suddenly all that dream creature had vanished; he was on his feet,
with a thumping heart, speaking.

Soon he had no tremors, only a dim consciousness that his words sounded
strange, and a queer icy pleasure in flinging them out into the silence.
Round him there seemed no longer men, only mouths and eyes. And he had
enjoyment in the feeling that with these words of his he was holding
those hungry mouths and eyes dumb and unmoving. Then he knew that he
had reached the end of what he had to say, and sat down, remaining
motionless in the centre of a various sound; staring