She knew that he was not responsible for what he did, yet she did not hesitate about obeying his command to approach. She had disobeyed him in the night in a matter concerning another, to save that other; she would not disobey now to save herself.
His face was ugly with unreasoning fury, and his eyes wilder than she had seen them before. He held up the stick.
‘Papa,’ she said, ‘not your right arm, or you will reopen the wound.’
Her calmness impressed him. He changed the stick into his left hand, and, gathering up the sheet into a knot, thrust it into his mouth and bit into it.
Was the moment come that Barbara had long dreaded? And was she to be the one on whom his madness first displayed itself?
‘Papa,’ she said, ‘I will take any punishment you think fit, but, pray, do not strike me, I cannot bear that—not for my own sake, but for yours.’
He paid no attention to her remonstrance, but raised the stick, holding it by the ferule.
Steadily looking into his sparkling eyes, Barbara repeated the words he had muttered and cried in his sleep, ‘De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine. Si iniquitates observaveris, quis sustinebit?’
Then, as in a dissolving view on a sheet one scene changes into another, so in his wild eyes the expression of rage shifted to one of fear; he dropped the stick, and Jasper, who at that moment entered, took it and laid it beyond his reach.