his effort to best show his love, a
_quantite negligeable_.

Thus Stephen, whilst feeling that the vague desires of budding womanhood
were trembling within her, had neither thought nor knowledge of their
character or their ultimate tendency. She would have been shocked,
horrified, had that logical process, which she applied so freely to less
personal matters, been used upon her own intimate nature. In her case
logic would of course act within a certain range; and as logic is a
conscious intellectual process, she became aware that her objective was
man. Man--in the abstract. 'Man,' not 'a man.' Beyond that, she could
not go. It is not too much to say that she did not ever, even in her
most errant thought, apply her reasoning, or even dream of its following
out either the duties, the responsibilities, or the consequences of
having a husband. She had a vague longing for younger companionship, and
of the kind naturally most interesting to her. There thought stopped.

One only of her male acquaintances did not at this time appear. Leonard
Everard, who had some time ago finished his course at college, was living
partly in London and partly on the Continent. His very absence made him
of added interest to his old play-fellow. The image of his grace and
comeliness, of his dominance and masculine force, early impressed on her
mind, began to compare favourably with the actualities of her other
friends; those of them at least who were within the circle of her
personal interest. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' In Stephen's
mind had been but a very mustard-seed of fondness. But new lights were
breaking for her; and all of them, in greater or lesser degree, shone in
turn on the memory of the pretty self-willed dominant boy, who now grew
larger and more masculine in stature under the instance of each
successive light. Stephen knew the others fairly well through and
through. The usual mixture of good and evil, of strength and weakness,
of purpose and vacillation, was quite within the scope of her own feeling
and of her observation. But this man was something of a problem to her;
and, as such, had a prominence in her thoughts quite beyond his own
worthiness.

In movement of some form is life; and even ideas grow when the pulses
beat and thought quickens. Stephen had long had in her mind the idea of
sexual equality. For a long time, in deference to her aunt's feelings,
she had not spoken of it; for the old lady