For all of which remarks--that sooner or later reached her ears--Dolly cared not a groat. Slowly, however, it dawned upon her by degrees she never could recall--by a process as gradual as that which is effected when night is changed to day--that Mr. Dean and men like him not merely disapproved of her, which was nothing and to be expected, but looked down upon her husband, which was much and astounding. By imperceptible degrees she arrived at the knowledge of the fact. More rapidly she grasped the reason, and came at the same time to a vague comprehension of the cause why between her soul and the souls of Mr. Dean and men and women like him, there lay an antagonism which should for ever prevent their knitting into one. All Christianity, all genius, all talent, all cleverness, all striving after an ideal, all industry; all patience, all bearing and forbearing, they held not as things in themselves intrinsically good, but as good only so far as they were available for money getting. Unless the sermon, or the book, or the invention, or the philanthropy or the hard work, or the vague yet passionate yearnings after a higher life which shy and self-contained natures possess and keep silence concerning--produced money, and a large amount of it, too--they despised those products of the human mind. They had made their money or their fathers had done so before them, and having made it they were to speak justly as they themselves could state their case, willing to subscribe to charities and missions, and put down their fifties, their hundreds, and their thousands at public meetings, and even to send anonymous donations when they thought such a style of giving might approve itself to God. But of that swift untarrying generosity which gives and forgets itself has given--of that Christian feeling which seeing a brother in need relieves him and omits to debit the Almighty with a dole--Mr. Dean and his fellows having no knowledge, they accounted Mortomley foolish because he had not considered himself first and the man who had need second. The world had gone on and the Mortomleys had stood still; but though they had not compassed their fair share of earthly prosperity, who shall say they were not "nearer the Kingdom" for that very reason.