She sighed and then looked up to him with a grateful smile.
"Thank you for telling me, Eric."
He turned away and moistened his lips.
"You mustn't forget that it affects my own position," he warned her.
The smile faded from her face, and she looked at him with startled eyes.
4
It was a silent dinner, for Eric was exhausted and Barbara was thinking deeply. Nearly a year ago, when Jack was first missing, she seemed to have lived through all these emotions, to have been tossed backwards and forwards in her dreams like a plaything of the gods at sport. For twelve months she had been sick with longing to know whether he still wanted her; and, when the gods had tortured her to madness, they let her think that the cruel game was over. She dreamed again of happiness, seeing herself as a child; another child, the very symbol of love and forgiveness, came to bring her peace, and they played together in the sun-drenched loveliness of a dream. Then the gods flung a shadow before her feet. In dream after dream her child-lover begged her to stay, but the shadow parted them and urged her forward. In time she realized that it was Jack's shadow.…
Never were dreams more vivid. She knew each note of her lover's voice as he begged her to stay and let him make her happy; and night after night she awoke to find herself stifling in the embrace of the shadow. Every one thought that she was dying; she herself knew that she was being driven mad; and, when the gods saw that she could bear no more, they filled the world with a blaze of light which banished dream and shadow.
"I hoped God had forgotten me," she whispered. "I've been happy too long. What am I to do, Eric?"
"You must follow your inclination."