"But where was I? What did I say?"
"You didn't say anything. You were just—moaning."
"They were stifling me!" she sobbed.
"No, darling, you'd only got your face among the pillows so that you couldn't breathe properly. What were you dreaming about?"
Barbara looked at her mother and summoned all her resolution to say nothing. It was wonderful to have any resolution left.... But Destiny had decided that she was to say nothing....
"I believe I'm going mad!" she whispered.
Lady Crawleigh tried to comfort her, but the girl shrank to the far side of the bed. It came to this, then, that she could no longer trust herself to go to sleep. For one night she had been in Heaven ... or in sight of Heaven.... She could not understand what had impelled her forward from the Garden and the Valley. Some one, something was waiting for her—on the lowest terrace, on the horizon where the white ribbon of road wound out of sight. Something called her away from the child in the blue ephod. And to-night Destiny had set an angel with a flaming sword to bar her path when she tried to follow him. Yet it was not an angel that she could see nor a sword that she could feel; it was an inhibition, an Authority.... Why not call it Destiny? It was something that kept her from the boy with the wistfully caressing voice, who loved her and promised to make her happy.... Something that frightened her, something that was sending her mad.
"I always said you oughtn't to sleep with all those pillows," sighed Lady Crawleigh.
"You can take them away, if you like. Good-night, mother. I hope I didn't frighten you. I'm going to sleep again now."