The great impulse of devotion which had entered her heart in the garden still governed her.  Now she was not afraid.  She did not think of running away.  She only knew that she must find her father quickly and take care of him.  Outside on the porch, the glimmering light from the stars showed her his figure, standing by one of the pillars, leaning forward, one hand to his ear.  As she came out of the door, he dropped his hand, threw back his head, and again sent out an agonizing cry—­“Bar-ba-ra! Where are you?” It was not the broken wail of despair; it was the strong, searching cry of a lost child who thinks trustingly that if he but screams loudly enough his mother must hear him and come—­and yet who is horribly frightened because she does not answer.  But this was a man in his full strength who called!  It seemed the sound must reach beyond the stars.  Sylvia felt her very bones ringing with it.  She went along the porch to her father, and laid her hand on his arm.  Through his sleeve she could feel how tense and knotted were the muscles.  “Oh, Father, don’t!” she said in a low tone.  He shook her off roughly, but did not turn his head or look at her.  Sylvia hesitated, not daring to leave him and not daring to try to draw him away; and again was shaken by that terrible cry.

The intensity of his listening attitude seemed to hush into breathlessness the very night about him, as it did Sylvia.  There was not a sound from the trees.  They stood motionless, as though carved in wood; not a bird fluttered a wing; not a night-insect shrilled; the brook, dried by the summer heat to a thread, crept by noiselessly.  As once more the frantic cry resounded, it seemed to pierce this opaque silence like a palpable missile, and to wing its way without hindrance up to the stars.  Not the faintest murmur came in answer.  The silence shut down again, stifling.  Sylvia and her father stood as though in the vacuum of a great bell-glass which shut them away from the rustling, breathing, living world.  Sylvia said again, imploringly, “Oh, Father!” He looked at her angrily, sprang from the porch, and walked rapidly towards the road, stumbling and tripping over the laces of his shoes, which Sylvia had loosened when she had persuaded him to lie down.  Sylvia ran after him, her long bounds bringing her up to his side in a moment.  The motion sent the blood racing through her stiffened limbs again.  She drew a long breath of liberation.  As she stepped along beside her father, peering in the starlight at his dreadful face, half expecting him to turn and strike her at any moment, she felt an immense relief.  The noise of their feet on the path was like a sane voice of reality.  Anything was more endurable than to stand silent and motionless and hear that screaming call lose itself in the grimly unanswering distance.