Time and again, in her dreams she found herself groping at that little window in the studio, desperately anxious to get out, and unable to move the fastening; and there was someone out there, among the little trees, whom she must at all costs join. Then, after a long time, during which she had been hurried through tumultuous events all lost to her waking memory, she would be running frantically through Brackenbine wood, not pursued, but searching for something, something that it was of the utmost importance to find, and which ever eluded her. Then the dark trees round her would thin out and she would be running more slowly with long strides, so long she seemed to be flying smoothly and effortlessly just above a field of deep green moss, and in a light that was neither sunlight nor moonlight she would see the Captain's evergreen oaks floating past her, and she knew that she was being drawn in her flight up towards the ruined castle behind the dark belt of forest, and there, though she could not see the entrance of the castle, she knew that there was waiting for her someone she dared not face and yet must join. She knew that she had wept with anxiety in her dream because if she could but find the thing she had lost then she would be able to face the person who stood in the entrance of the castle.
Sobbing, she looked wildly about her for the lost thing, knowing that everyone else had it and she alone had not. For now there were other people round her. She began to go more and more slowly, until she was walking, dragging her feet, rather, over the yielding moss, and she had fallen behind the murmurous throng. Still, she was not alone; she was under the gnarled old trees that screened the castle, and by every tree there stood a person. At first she could not make out who these people were, but the wood grew lighter after a time and then she saw that they were girls in shining dresses, some green, some gold and red and yellow, like flames; they stood upright, close to the trunks of the trees, so close, indeed, that she was not sure if their bodies did not form the very trunks of the trees, and their pale arms upheld long, gleaming tresses of hair which at the same time was the foliage of the trees. Round each girl was a bright ring of flames which neither increased nor diminished, but burned still and clear upon the moss; and the girls were laughing, each with uptilted face, listening to something, a voice or a sound of instruments that sounded, Clare knew, though her own ear could not catch it, infinitely sweet from the halls of the castle.
Weeping, she looked down at her own feet, round which she knew there should be a circle of bright, still flame, and all that shone there was a broken chain of little sparks, green points like cats' eyes or glow−worms. The green sparks wavered, weaving in and out about her, but would not form the circle that she must have; her feet sank deep into the moss, which clasped them and held her fast, and she awoke with a dreadful load upon her heart, hearing herself say aloud: 'It is broken! It is broken!'
It seemed to Clare that these fragments recurred constantly in the immense volume of dreams that her imagination composed every night. In themselves the images were not frightening; on the contrary, there was a strange grace and beauty about those half−human trees, but the accompanying feeling of anxiety, of dreadful sorrow for the broken circle, was so intolerable that by the third or fourth night after she began to experience this agitation of mind, she grew afraid to sleep at all and tried to force herself to keep awake by reading, but then, perversely, sleep would overcome her almost at once, and willy−nilly she was back in Brackenbine wood, or in the dark studio, a prey to the same anguish.
She told no one about these troubles—indeed, there was no one at Paston Hall whom she would ever have dreamt of telling; but she saw the effects in her pale face and darkened eyes, and she feared that either Miss Geary or Mrs. Sterne would notice the change and ask her if she was not well. Above all, she feared that Miss Sperrod would conclude that she was overworking and make her reduce her visits to Brackenbine, or perhaps advise her father that she was not fit enough to work for the scholarship and so end her connection with Brackenbine altogether. To guard against that, which would have been an unbearable loss, Clare in the first place took care to avoid meeting Miss Sperrod as much as she could, and secondly, deliberately put on a cheerfulness of expression and a briskness of demeanour beyond her normal wont.
The nightly travails of her mind ceased as abruptly as they had begun, and in circumstances that proved to her what their true cause had been.
One afternoon about a week after Niall's departure she went to Brackenbine as usual. Miss Geary had told her that she would be late in meeting her at the lodge−gates on her return, and the prospect of a longer time with Mrs. Sterne should have put Clare into the highest of spirits; but today she walked the rough road through the wood slowly, her mental exhaustion seeming to induce a like lassitude in her body, so that she felt drained of energy and as worn−out as though she had in fact laboured over all the rugged miles her dream−body had traversed the night before.
The door of the house, as always, stood open, but Mrs. Sterne was not in the dining−parlour. A slight noise or the breaking of sticks drew Clare to the door of the drawing−room, and there she saw Mrs. Sterne at the hearth piling all the evergreen Christmas decorations into a great pyre inside the chimney.
“Hallo!” Mrs. Sterne called cheerfully. “I'm just finishing!”
Clare went across to her and bent to help her to stack up the withered sprays of laurel and the branches of fir and holly that had decked the room. The great Christmas−tree had been taken down and stripped of its candles and it lay now slanting across the fireplace as the centrepiece of the bonfire to be.
“Mind your hands on the holly,” said Mrs. Sterne, who was wearing leather gloves. Clare picked up an armful of fir branches which rained needles down upon the bricks of the hearth.
“I thought you were supposed to take your Christmas decorations down on Twelfth Night,” she said. “It's past that now, isn't it?”
“It is,” answered Mrs. Sterne. “I just left them up until Niall came back.”
Clare had taken a step inside the great fireplace. She stood rooted there with her back to Mrs. Sterne and her eyes fixed on the branches of the spruce sloping across the brick cavern in front of her.
“Niall?” she said, without turning round. “Is he back?” Mrs. Sterne answered with incredible casualness:
“Not yet. He will be this evening, I expect.”
Clare turned and began sweeping up the sprays and branches, being busy as if her dear life depended on it, and she talked in a babble which, try as she might to control it, sounded feverishly elated in her own ears.
“There,” said Mrs. Sterne in a short while. “That's the lot, I think. You haven't scratched yourself, have you? There's old Christmas on the bier again. We shall sit and watch him burn tonight. Let's go across to the other room now. It's chilly in here.”