HAROLD’S condition of mind and feeling on that morning of the first of May was so complicated and perplexed that he felt for the first time in his life utterly unable to see his way. He was accustomed to having things, no matter how difficult, look definite to him. He had not hesitated in deciding on his sudden marriage with Sophia Rutledge, nor had he felt the least hesitation as to his course a month later, when she demanded a divorce from him. His path had been clear and open before him, and he had taken it unflinchingly. He felt the same ability to do, and the same courage to endure, now, if he could only see his way. He knew himself too well to suppose that, after having been married to this woman, he could ever love another, and he had quite decided to accept his life and to put the thought of happiness out of it. In making this decision he had had the strongest possible conviction of the truth of his wife’s declaration that she did not love him, and it was this which had made submission to her decision the only possible course for him. She was such a strong and resolute woman that he had imagined her, after the stern ordeal of the first few months of separation, going resolutely on, with her life adjusted to its new conditions; and although he was certain that her marriage, separation, and the coming divorce would make too deep marks in her womanly consciousness for her ever to think of marrying again, he quite believed that she was the calm and self-poised woman for which he knew nature had intended her. It was therefore a great surprise to him, on meeting her again, to see such marked indications of indecision, nervousness, and lack of control. He felt that she often said and did what she had meant not to say and do, and he was aware that she was a prey to variableness, fluctuation, and caprice. What did it mean? This was the question which he set himself to consider with all the concentration of his mind. He did not know--what was the truth--that these new qualities in her existed only with regard to himself, and that to her aunt, her acquaintances, her servants, and all who came in contact with her, she was more than ever decided, self-collected, and even self-willed. If he could have known that, it would have let in light upon a subject and situation which seemed to him impenetrably dark. Every time that he had seen her she had left upon his mind a different impression. Sometimes he wondered if she could be ill, to account for such a change; and sometimes he told himself that it was an unpardonable demand upon her nervous endurance for him to come into her presence. Still, when he reflected, he had never thrust himself upon her, and on the only occasion when their meeting had not been accidental, it had been her deliberate doing. What must he conclude from this?