CHAPTER V



One of the greatest factors in the preservation of the Baroness's
beauty had been her ability to sleep under all conditions. The woman
who can and does sleep eight or nine hours out of each twenty-four is
well armed against the onslaught of time and trouble.

To say that such women do not possess heart enough or feeling enough
to suffer is ofttimes most untrue.

Insomnia is a disease of the nerves or of the stomach, rather than
the result of extreme emotion. Sometimes the people who sleep the
most profoundly at night in times of sorrow, suffer the more
intensely during their waking hours. Disguised as a friend,
deceitful Slumber comes to them only to strengthen their powers of
suffering, and to lend a new edge to pain.

The Baroness was not without feeling. Her temperament was far from
phlegmatic. She had experienced great cyclones of grief and loss in
her varied career, though many years had elapsed since she had known
what the French call a "white night."

But the night following her interview with Preston Cheney she never
closed her eyes in sleep. It was in vain that she tried all known
recipes for producing slumber. She said the alphabet backward ten
times; she counted one thousand; she conjured up visions of sheep
jumping the time-honoured fence in battalions, yet the sleep god
never once drew near.