think Dodo must be tired or something," said Edith. "I never saw her like that before. She was horribly serious. I hope nothing has happened."
The piano in the drawing-room was close to a large French window opening on to the lawn. Edith threw it open, and stood for a moment looking out into the darkness. She could just see Dodo and Nora sitting where they had left them, though they were no more than two pale spots against the dark background. She was conscious of a strange feeling that there was an undercurrent at work in Dodo, which showed itself by a few chance bubbles and little sudden eddies on the surface, which she thought required explanation.
Dodo certainly was not quite like herself. There was no edge to her vivacity: her attempts not to be serious had been distinctly forced, and she was unable to keep it up. Edith felt a vague sense of coming disaster; slight but certain. However, she drew her chair to the piano and began to play.
Miss Grantham was conscious of the same sort of feeling. Since the others had gone in, Dodo had sat quite silent, and she had not taken her cigarette.
"You had a nice time then, abroad?" she remarked at length.
"Oh, yes," said Dodo, rousing herself. "I enjoyed it a good deal. The hotel was full of the hotel class, you know. A little trying at times, but not to matter. We had a charming party there. Algernon is getting quite worldly. However, he is ridiculously fond of Maud, and she'll keep him straight. Do you know the Prince?"
"Hardly at all," said Miss Grantham.
"What do you think of him, as far as you've seen?" asked Dodo.
"I think he is rather impressive," said Miss Grantham. "I felt I should do as he told me."
"Ah, you think that, do you?" asked Dodo, with the most careful carelessness. "He struck me that way, too, a little."
"I should think he was an instance of what Edith meant when she said that to be intimate with anyone was to be under their influence."
"Edith's awfully wrong, I think, about the whole idea," said Dodo, hastily. "I should hate to be under anyone's influence; yet, I think, the only pleasure of knowing people is to be intimate. I would sooner have one real friend than fifty acquaintances."
"Did you see much of him?" asked Miss Grantham.
"Yes, a good deal," she said, "a great deal, in fact. I think Edith's right about intimacy as regards him, though he's an exception. In general, I think, she's wrong. What's that she's playing?"
"Anyhow, it's Wagner," said Miss Grantham.
"I know it," said Dodo. "It's the 'Tannhauser' overture. Listen, there's the Venus motif crossing the Pilgrim's march. Ah, that's simply wicked. The worst of it is, the Venus part is so much more attractive than the other. It's horrible."
"You're dreadfully serious to-night, Dodo," said Miss Grantham.
"I'm a little tired, I think," she said. "I was travelling all last night, you know. Come, let's go in."
Dodo went to bed soon afterwards. She said she was tired, and a little overdone. Edith looked at her rather closely as she said good-night.
"You're sure it's nothing more?" she asked. "There's nothing wrong with you, is there?"
"I shall be all right in the morning," said Dodo, rather wearily. "Don't let them call me till nine."
Dodo went upstairs and found that her maid had unpacked for her. A heap of books was lying on the table, and from among these she drew out a large envelope with a photograph inside. It was signed "Waldenech."
Dodo looked at it a moment, then placed it back in its envelope, and went to the window. She felt the necessity of air. The room seemed close and hot, and she threw it wide open.
She stood there for ten minutes or more quite still, looking out into the night. Then she went back to the table and took up the envelope again. With a sudden passionate gesture she tore it in half, then across again, and threw the pieces into the grate.
Chapter Nineteen
Dodo slept long and dreamlessly that night; the deep, dreamless sleep which an evenly-balanced fatigue of body and mind so often produces, though we get into bed feeling that our brain is too deep in some tangle of unsolved thought to be able to extricate itself, and fall into the dim immensity of sleep. The waking from such a sleep is not so pleasant. The first moment of conscious thought sometimes throws the whole burden again on to our brain with a sudden start of pain that is almost physical. There is no transition. We were asleep and we are awake, and we find that sleep has brought us only a doubtful gift, for with our renewed strength of body has come the capability of keener suffering. When we are tired, mental distress is only a dull ache, but in the hard, convincing morning it strikes a deadlier and deeper pain. But sometimes Nature is more merciful. She opens the sluices of our brain quietly, and, though the water still rushes in turbidly and roughly, yet the fact that our brain fills by degrees makes us more able to bear the full weight, than when it comes suddenly with a wrenching and, perhaps, a rending of our mental machinery.
It was in this way that Dodo woke. The trouble of the day came to her gradually during the moments of waking. She dreamed she was waiting for Jack in the garden where she had been sitting the night before. It was perfectly dark, and she could not see him coming, but she heard a step along the gravel path, and started up with a vague alarm, for it did not sound like his. Then a greyness, as of dawn, began to steal over the night, and she saw the outline of the trees against the sky, and the outline of a man's figure near her, and it was a figure she knew well, but it was not Jack. On this dream the sense of waking was pure relief; it was broad day, and her maid was standing by her and saying that it was a quarter past nine.
Dodo lay still a few moments longer, feeling a vague joy that her dream was not true, that the helplessness of that grey moment, when she saw that it was not Jack, was passed, that she was awake again, and unfettered, save by thoughts which could be consciously checked and stifled. It was with a vast sense of satisfaction that she remembered her last act on the evening before, of which the scattered fragments in the grate afforded ocular proof. She felt as if she had broken a visible, tangible fetter—one strand, at any rate, of the cord that hound her was lying broken before her eyes. If she had been quite securely tied she could not have done that..—
The sense of successful effort, with a visible result, gave her a sudden feeling of power to do more; the absence of bodily fatigue, and the presence of superfluous physical health, all seemed part of a different order of things to that of the night before. She got up and dressed quickly, feeling more like her own self than she had done for several days. The destruction of his photograph was really a great achievement. She had no idea how far things had gone till she felt the full effect of conscious effort and its result. She could see now exactly where she had stood on the evening before, very unpleasantly close to the edge of a nasty place, slippery and steep. Anyhow, she was one step nearer that pleasant, green-looking spot at the top of the slope—a quiet, pretty place, not particularly extensive, but very pleasing, and very safe.
The three others were half-way through breakfast when Dodo came down. Lady Grantham was feeling a little bored. Dodo flung open the door and came marching in, whistling "See the Conquering Hero comes."
"That's by Handel, you know, Edith," she said. "Handel
