Presently she grew restless, and so to escape from the folly of her thoughts, she resolved to make a short voyage of exploration on her own account.
She had no difficulty in discovering the opening in the bushes which enclosed the hollow, and passing through she found herself on a narrow green path leading through the forest. The brambles crept close to her side, and at times even stretched their long arms across her path, but in the clear light of day she had no great difficulty in making her way along a road which in the darkness of the previous night had appeared fraught with almost insuperable difficulty.
She tripped along at a fair pace beneath the towering branches, pausing ever and anon to gaze with wondering delight at some newly opening scene of woodland beauty.
Now she would pass a stretch of bracken, higher than her head, through which the sunlight streamed in a blaze of emerald fire. Anon she came to pause in a grove of beeches, gazing up in awe at the giant branches above her, curving in graceful arches far above her head; or she stooped in delight over some gnarled old tree-stump, alive with feathery ferns and delicately coloured lichens; and once she came to a wide, green bank o'ercovered quite with delicate cobwebs, dew-flecked, shimmering like silken gauze, beneath which swayed the tender lily-plants, like the slender forms of eastern beauties, dancing in their jewelled veils.
It was a world of magic delight, and as she wandered on, she fell again beneath the forest spell, and forgot her cares in the sheer joy of beauty. For the forest has a magic charm for all who will yield to its influence. The song of the sea is restlessness; the teaching of the hills is aspiration, but the spell of the forest is peace.
But suddenly she stopped, with a quick indrawing of the breath, for close beside her, separated only by a leafy screen, she heard a deep, shuddering sigh.
Her first impulse was to flee at once along the road she had come, back to the safe shelter of the hollow. But her curiosity stayed her, and she waited, hand on heart, for what should follow.
Again came the groan, and this time she could distinguish some muttered words.
"My God! I will endure no more. It must end now."
Barbara had been no true woman had she turned back now. But it was perhaps as much pity as curiosity that prompted her to push gently aside the branches, and peer through them at the speaker of these despairing words.