‘You have dared to do that!’ His eyes began to kindle and the colour left his cheeks, which became white as chalk. Barbara saw that he had lost command over himself. His feeble reason was overwhelmed by passion. ‘Papa,’ she said, in her calmest tones, ‘I have never disobeyed you before. Only on this one occasion my conscience——’ ‘Conscience!’ he cried. ‘I have a conscience in a thornbush, and yours is asleep in feathers. You have dared to creep in here like a thief in the night and steal from me what I ordered you to leave.’ He was playing with his stick, clutching it in the middle and turning it. With his other hand he clutched and twisted and almost tore the sheets. Barbara believed that he would strike her, but when he said ‘Come here,’ she approached him, looking him full in the face without shrinking. She knew that he was not responsible for what he did, yet she did not hesitate about obeying his command to approach. She had disobeyed him in the night in a matter concerning another, to save that other; she would not disobey now to save herself. His face was ugly with unreasoning fury, and his eyes wilder than she had seen them before. He held up the stick. ‘Papa,’ she said, ‘not your right arm, or you will reopen the wound.’ Her calmness impressed him. He changed the stick into his left hand, and, gathering up the sheet into a knot, thrust it into his mouth and bit into it. Was the moment come that Barbara had long dreaded? And was she to be the one on whom his madness first displayed itself? ‘Papa,’ she said, ‘I will take any punishment you think fit, but, pray, do not strike me, I cannot bear that—not for my own sake, but for yours.’ He paid no attention to her remonstrance, but raised the stick, holding it by the ferule. Steadily looking into his sparkling eyes, Barbara repeated the words he had muttered and cried in his sleep, ‘_De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine. Si iniquitates observaveris, quis sustinebit?_’ Then, as in a dissolving view on a sheet one scene changes into another, so in his wild eyes the expression of rage shifted to one of fear; he dropped the stick, and Jasper, who at that moment entered, took it and laid it beyond his reach. Mr. Jordan fell back on his pillow and moaned, and put his hands over his brow, and beat his temples with his palms. He would not look at his daughter again, but peevishly turned his face away. Now Barbara’s strength deserted her; she felt as if the floor under her feet were rolling and as if the walls of the room were contracting upon her. ‘I must have air,’ she said. Jasper caught her arm and led her through the hall into the garden. Eve, alarmed to see her sister so colourless, ran to support her on the other side, and overwhelmed her with inconsiderate attentions.