ners and grooms, had been always forbidden to enter it. Thus by
long usage it had become a place of quiet and solitude for the members of
the family.

To this soothing spot had come Stephen in her pain. The long spell of
self-restraint during that morning had almost driven her to frenzy, and
she sought solitude as an anodyne to her tortured soul. The long anguish
of a third sleepless night, following on a day of humiliation and terror,
had destroyed for a time the natural resilience of a healthy nature. She
had been for so long in the prison of her own purpose with Fear as
warder; the fetters of conventional life had so galled her that here in
the accustomed solitude of this place, in which from childhood she had
been used to move and think freely, she felt as does a captive who has
escaped from an irksome durance. As Stephen had all along been free of
movement and speech, no such opportunities of freedom called to her. The
pent-up passion in her, however, found its own relief. Her voice was
silent, and she moved with slow steps, halting often between the green
tree-trunks in the cool shade; but her thoughts ran free, and passion
found a vent. No stranger seeing the tall, queenly girl moving slowly
through the trees could have imagined the fierce passion which blazed
within her, unless he had been close enough to see her eyes. The habit
of physical restraint to which all her life she had been accustomed, and
which was intensified by the experience of the past thirty-six hours,
still ruled her, even here. Gradually the habit of security began to
prevail, and the shackles to melt away. Here had she come in all her
childish troubles. Here had she fought with herself, and conquered
herself. Here the spirits of the place were with her and not against
her. Here memory in its second degree, habit, gave her the full sense of
spiritual freedom.

As she walked to and fro the raging of her spirit changed its objective:
from restraint to its final causes; and chief amongst them the pride
which had been so grievously hurt. How she loathed the day that had
passed, and how more than all she hated herself for her part in it; her
mad, foolish, idiotic, self-importance which gave her the idea of such an
act and urged her to the bitter end of its carrying out; her mulish
obstinacy in persisting when every fibre of her being had revolted at the
doing, and when deep in her inmost soul was a deterring sense of its
futility.