Now and then she stroked herself, getting strange comfort out of the
presence of her body. She had that old unhappy feeling of having two
selves within her. And this soft night full of the quiet stir of the
sea, and of dark immensity, woke in her a terrible longing to be at one
with something, somebody, outside herself. At the Ball last night the
'flying feeling' had seized on her again; and was still there--a queer
manifestation of her streak of recklessness. And this result of her
contacts with Courtier, this 'cacoethes volandi', and feeling of clipped
wings, hurt her--as being forbidden hurts a child.
She remembered how in the housekeeper's room at Monkland there lived a
magpie who had once sought shelter in an orchid-house from some pursuer.
As soon as they thought him wedded to civilization, they had let him
go, to see whether he would come back. For hours he had sat up in a high
tree, and at last come down again to his cage; whereupon, fearing lest
the rooks should attack him when he next took this voyage of discovery,
they clipped one of his wings. After that the twilight bird, though
he lived happily enough, hopping about his cage and the terrace
which served him for exercise yard, would seem at times restive and
frightened, moving his wings as if flying in spirit, and sad that he
must stay on earth.
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