The knowledge brought him to a dead halt. His thoughts had fallen in train with his steps: he had the feeling that he was being beaten while he walked--only could be master of himself while he stood still and centred all his faculties on defeating the impulses that goaded him as they had goaded him earlier in the day. As the sufferer on a sick-bed tosses wearily through the sleepless night and comes from weariness to savage groans and curses that rest is not to be found nor a cool position discovered, so he lashed in spirit to find a stable thought that would support him amid the tumult that possessed him. He strove to image Aunt Maggie with gentle eyes; he could command no more than a glimpse before she was presented to him again as not understanding--not understanding!--unkind, unkind! He directed his mind at Japhra and strove to see how small a thing, how childish, how petty was his trouble; in a moment, "Preposterous! preposterous!" shouted the tumult. "A small thing to others? Easy for them to think that. Let them apply it to their own concerns! How can they judge what is your affair alone? If you are struck, can they feel your pain? If you are starving, can they measure your hunger?" And again, with greater cunning: "Why, what a damnable philosophy is this that calls upon a man to suffer any rebuke, and smile and submit, and declare it is a small thing, unworthy of notice, and cover himself with sophistries as that life is too big, the sea too deep, the hills too high, for such an affair to cause affront! What, is that a man's part, do you think? A man's part--or a coward's?" "Not the right way to put it!" Percival struggled. "A false way to look at it!" And his adversary, with deeper cunning yet: "Is it fight you would, as Japhra bade you? You did not explain all the circumstances to him. A man must do something with his life--he admitted that. Is it fight you would? Why, fight then! Choose your own life. Make your own life. For that a man should fight! Get into the world and prove yourself a man! You are no better than a baby here--worse than a baby; you're a lout. What sort of a lout will you be in another year or so? What will they think of you then? Ah, go on; make this precious ring-business of your life. Rebuke yourself--your natural desires, your rightful ambitions; win your fight as Japhra bade you win it, and then when all laugh at you or ignore you for a contemptible lout--then tell them, tell all the village what a rare prize you have really won--tell it to Rollo, tell it to Dora!"