“The law into your own hands.”

Miltoun unshaded his face.  His gaze seemed to have to travel from an immense distance before it reached Courtier.  He answered: 

“Yes, I thought you would say that.”

CHAPTER XVII

When everything, that night, was quiet, Barbara, her hair hanging loose outside her dressing gown, slipped from her room into the dim corridor.  With bare feet thrust into fur-crowned slippers which made no noise, she stole along looking at door after door.  Through a long Gothic window, uncurtained, the mild moonlight was coming.  She stopped just where that moonlight fell, and tapped.  There came no answer.  She opened the door a little way, and said: 

“Are you asleep, Eusty?”

There still came no answer, and she went in.

The curtains were drawn, but a chink of moonlight peering through fell on the bed.  This was empty.  Barbara stood uncertain, listening.  In the heart of that darkness there seemed to be, not sound, but, as it were, the muffled soul of sound, a sort of strange vibration, like that of a flame noiselessly licking the air.  She put her hand to her heart, which beat as though it would leap through the thin silk covering.  From what corner of the room was that mute tremor coming?  Stealing to the window, she parted the curtains, and stared back into the shadows.  There, on the far side, lying on the floor with his arms pressed tightly round his head and his face to the wall, was Miltoun.  Barbara let fall the curtains, and stood breathless, with such a queer sensation in her breast as she had never felt; a sense of something outraged-of scarred pride.  It was gone at once, in a rush of pity.  She stepped forward quickly in the darkness, was visited by fear, and stopped.  He had seemed absolutely himself all the evening.  A little more talkative, perhaps, a little more caustic than usual.  And now to find him like this!  There was no great share of reverence in Barbara, but what little she possessed had always been kept for her eldest brother.  He had impressed her, from a child, with his aloofness, and she had been proud of kissing him because he never seemed to let anybody else do so.  Those caresses, no doubt, had the savour of conquest; his face had been the undiscovered land for her lips.  She loved him as one loves that which ministers to one’s pride; had for him, too, a touch of motherly protection, as for a doll that does not get on too well with the other dolls; and withal a little unaccustomed awe.

Dared she now plunge in on this private agony?  Could she have borne that anyone should see herself thus prostrate?  He had not heard her, and she tried to regain the door.  But a board creaked; she heard him move, and flinging away her fears, said:  “It’s me!  Babs!” and dropped on her knees beside him.  If it had not been so pitch dark she could never have done that.