ries, remorselessly and to the end.

CHAPTER IX--IN THE SPRING

The months since her father's death spread into the second year before
Stephen began to realise the loneliness of her life. She had no
companion now but her aunt; and though the old lady adored her, and she
returned her love in full, the mere years between them made impossible
the companionship that youth craves. Miss Rowly's life was in the past.
Stephen's was in the future. And loneliness is a feeling which comes
unbidden to a heart.

Stephen felt her loneliness all round. In old days Harold was always
within hail, and companionship of equal age and understanding was
available. But now his very reticence in her own interest, and by her
father's wishes, made for her pain. Harold had put his strongest
restraint on himself, and in his own way suffered a sort of silent
martyrdom. He loved Stephen with every fibre of his being. Day by day
he came toward her with eager step; day by day he left her with a pang
that made his heart ache and seemed to turn the brightness of the day to
gloom. Night by night he tossed for hours thinking, thinking, wondering
if the time would ever come when her kisses would be his . . . But the
tortures and terrors of the night had their effect on his days. It
seemed as if the mere act of thinking, of longing, gave him ever renewed
self-control, so that he was able in his bearing to carry out the task he
had undertaken: to give Stephen time to choose a mate for herself. Herein
lay his weakness--a weakness coming from his want of knowledge of the
world of women. Had he ever had a love affair, be it never so mild a
one, he would have known that love requires a positive expression. It is
not sufficient to sigh, and wish, and hope, and long, all to oneself.
Stephen felt instinctively that his guarded speech and manner were due to
the coldness--or rather the trusting abated worship--of the brotherhood
to which she had been always accustomed. At the time when new forces
were manifesting and expanding themselves within her; when her growing
instincts, cultivated by the senses and the passions of young nature,
made her aware of other forces, new and old, expanding themselves outside
her; at the time when the heart of a girl is eager for new impressions
and new expansions, and the calls of sex are working within her all
unconsciously, Harold, to whom her heart would probably have been the
first to turn, made himself in