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 his
effort to best show his love, a quantite negligeable.
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