John remained rather more than a fortnight at home. His arm healed and his health improved during this interval of quiet. But he did not relieve his mind by any disclosure of his feelings. Indeed, what was there to disclose? He asked himself the question ten times in a day. He had come to no breach with Kate, he had not quarrelled with her father; he had, on the contrary, increased his claims upon Mr Crediton by actual service; and the something which had sprung up between Kate and himself was like a wall of glass or of transparent ice, changing nothing to outward appearance. He spent his time in an uneasy languor, sometimes roused to positive suffering, but more generally in mere discomfort, vague as his thoughts were, as his prospects were, as all the world was to him. It seemed even a thing of the past that his feelings should be very vehement about that or any other subject. He had gone through a great deal of active pain, but now it seemed all to be passive, and he only a kind of spectator. A host of questions had widened out like circles in the water round the central question. What was life worth? was it any great matter how it was spent? The banker among his manifold concerns, or Mr Whichelo among the clerks, or the Rector of Fanshawe Regis in his library--did it matter to any mortal creature which was which? The one was laying up money which a great fire or a scoundrel at the other end of the world might make an end of in a moment; the other was laughed at behind his back, and outwitted by the young men whom he thought he had so well in hand; and the third--what was the parish the better for Dr Mitford? And yet John had to face the matter steadily, as if it were of the greatest importance, and decide which of these pretences at existence he would adopt. He got no letter during this curious interval. The outer world kept silence and did not interfere with his ponderings. Heaven and earth, and even Kate and his mother, left him to take his own way.