his own side of the matter, and tried to find
some justification of Stephen's act.

'Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened to ye' has perhaps
a general as well as a special significance. It is by patient tireless
seeking that many a precious thing has been found. It was after many a
long cycle of thought that the seeking and the knocking had effectual
result. Harold came to believe, vaguely at first but more definitely as
the evidence nucleated, that Stephen's act was due to some mad girlish
wish to test her own theory; to prove to herself the correctness of her
own reasoning, the fixity of her own purpose. He did not go on analysing
further; for as he walked the room with a portion of the weight taken
from his heart he noticed that the sky was beginning to quicken. The day
would soon be upon him, and there was work to be done. Instinctively he
knew that there was trouble in store for Stephen, and he felt that in
such an hour he should be near her. All her life she had been accustomed
to him. In her sorrows to confide in him, to tell him her troubles so
that they might dwindle and pass away; to enhance her pleasures by making
him a sharer in them.

Harold was inspirited by the coming of the new day. There was work to be
done, and the work must be based on thought. His thoughts must take a
practical turn; what was he to do that would help Stephen? Here there
dawned on him for the first time the understanding of a certain
humiliation which she had suffered; she had been refused! She who had
stepped so far out of the path of maidenly reserve in which she had
always walked as to propose marriage to a man, had been refused! He did
not, could not, know to the full the measure of such humiliation to a
woman; but he could guess at any rate a part. And that guessing made him
grind his teeth in impotent rage.

But out of that rage came an inspiration. If Stephen had been humiliated
by the refusal of one man, might not this be minimised if she in turn
might refuse another? Harold knew so well the sincerity of his own love
and the depth of his own devotion that he was satisfied that he could not
err in giving the girl the opportunity of refusing him. It would be some
sort of balm to her wounded spirit to know that Leonard's views were not
shared by all men. That there were others who would deem it a joy to
serve as her slaves. When she had refused him she would perhaps feel
easier in her mind. O