Mad Barbara by Warwick Deeping

Barbara Purcell could not sleep that night, perhaps because she had chosen not to have her curtains drawn, so that the light of the full moon poured into the room. An increasing restlessness brought with it that feverish race of thoughts, where the memories of years flash out and intermingle like fantastic figures at a masked ball.

She sat up at last in bed, shook her dark hair free from her shoulders, and stretched her arms out over her knees. The window stood a brilliant square in the blackness of the wall, each lozenge of glass like crystal set in ebony. Through the open casement she could see the silvery domes of the great trees in the park and the few faint clouds that streaked the summer sky. Her restlessness and the close night air made the moonlight seem like a shower of icy spray. And it was as though some feverish freak inspired her with the whim of bathing her hands and face in it, for she slipped out of bed, her white feet gliding over the polished woodwork of the floor.