I just fancied how anybody would feel under such circumstances;" and he clung to the hope that it was true in this case.

But it was not.

Already Mercy had a sense of antagonism, of warfare, with Stephen, or rather with her love for him.

Already her pride was beginning to array itself in reticence, in withdrawal, in suppression.

More than once she had said to herself "I can live without him! I could bear that pain better than this." More than once she had asked herself with a kind of terror, "Do I really wish ever to see Stephen again ?" and had been forced to own in her secret thought that she shrank from meeting him.