"It was a pity to say that. You've covered my picture with a thin grey-yellow wash—Thames water—which dulls my colours."
"Do you mean that I'm not speaking the truth?" she asked stiffly.
"I had no right to say what I did," he answered apologetically. "But you sounded so heart-broken."
"Well, in addition to being not very well, I'm not particularly happy. Life's such a hopeless thing, if you can't control it."
"And you say that, Lady Barbara, with your brains and your looks and your health and your money——"
"Even if I've got them all, they needn't make me happy.... They don't! Sometimes I feel that, if I could give them all up, if I could make one gigantic sacrifice, I might be happy.... You're not sorry to have been fighting, are you? But I wonder what equal sacrifice a woman can make."
"Ah, to die with credit is the easiest thing in the world," O'Rane answered, as he pushed back his chair.
When she was half-way upstairs, Barbara excused herself and went to her room. Sonia and her husband were so happy that their happiness hurt her; she grudged it them. There was no reason under heaven why she should not be as happy, but Destiny had not yet ordained it. Perhaps Destiny had decided that she should see it for a moment and then have it snatched from her. It was a variant of her old fear that she would have to marry Jack and then fall in love with some one else; then she had regarded such a fate as her punishment. Destiny, she now felt, did not concern itself with rewards and punishments; it was altogether too arbitrary.
She lay on her bed without undressing and thought over the day's emotions. Of all that she had done she only regretted her momentary panic when she ran away from Mrs. Savage; and, the more she regretted it, the more determined she became to go again and to demand full answers to all her questions. As soon as her mind was made up, she felt better. People might call her superstitious, gullible or anything else they pleased, but they should not say that she was a coward. Jumping up from the bed, she tidied her hair and went down to the drawing-room in time to find Sonia saying good-bye.
"Oh, don't go yet," said Barbara. "I had such a headache that I had to lie down, but it's better now. I haven't had a moment with you the whole evening."