She waited until she was alone and then sprang out of bed. If she slept, the shadow would return ... Jack's shadow; she mustered courage to call it by its right name. You could not go to sleep, if you walked up and down, up and down all night.... At three o'clock she stripped a row of glass beads from a dress and poured them into her shoes. You could not go to sleep, if every step made you wince with pain and bite your lip to keep from crying.... When her maid came in, Barbara was asleep, with smarting eyes and tears on her cheeks, huddled at the side of her bed. One foot had a blister as big as a young pea....
She breakfasted and dressed feverishly to escape from the house before her mother was up and before the doctor could mouth his inanities about "getting the nerves right, dear child, and then everything else will be right."
"I don't expect I shall be back to lunch," she told her maid.
Soon she was in St. James' Park, because Destiny sent her there.... Government cars were racing down the Mall; a procession of officers poured into Whitehall, and by the statue of James II she saw Oakleigh and O'Rane walking arm-in-arm towards the Admiralty. George would tell her that she did not look quite so well; O'Rane would mark her voice and paint his conception of her with such blazing splashes of his "red for pain" as seeing eye had never beheld. She turned and ran up the Duke of York's Steps; Destiny had decided that she was to escape these two for once....
To meet Lady Poynter in Bond Street was to be flung against reality and made sane.
"My dear Babs! How wretched you're looking," she heard; and the shops, the taxis and the passers-by steadied to immobility. They were gloriously solid; they would frown on her, if she screamed or ran away.
"I'm feeling rather wretched," she answered in a recognizable voice. "I had rather a bad night."
"Your mother told me you were disgracefully overworked at the hospital," said Lady Poynter. "Now, what we's all got to do is to arrange a little holiday for you——"
Barbara smiled and shook her head. Yet it was no use shaking your head when Destiny had flung Lady Poynter across your path. If Destiny had arranged for her what might, for argument's sake, be called a holiday....
"I haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do," she answered.