Catherine coming home tired from teaching or visiting, would find her step quickening as she reached the gate of the rectory, and the sense of delicious possession waking up in her, which is one of the first fruits of motherhood. There, at the window, between the lamplight behind and the winter dusk outside, would be the child in its nurse’s arms, little wondering, motiveless smiles passing over the tiny puckered face that was so oddly like Robert already. And afterward, in the fire-lit nursery, with the bath in front of the high fender, and all the necessaries of baby life beside it, she would go through those functions which mothers love and linger over, let the kicking, dimpled creature principally concerned protest as it may against the over-refinements of civilization. Then, when the little restless voice was stilled, and the cradle left silent in the darkened room, there would come the short watching for Robert, his voice, his kiss, their simple meal together, a moment of rest, of laughter and chat, before some fresh effort claimed them. Every now and then--white-letter days--there would drop on them a long evening together. Then out would come one of the few books--Dante or Virgil or Milton--which had entered into the fibre of Catherine’s strong nature. The two heads would draw close over them, or Robert would take some thought of hers as a text, and spout away from the hearthrug, watching all the while for her smile, her look of assent. Sometimes, late at night, when there was a sermon on his mind, he would dive into his pocket for his Greek Testament and make her read, partly for the sake of teaching her--for she knew some Greek and longed to know more--but mostly that he might get from her some of that garnered wealth of spiritual experience which he adored in her. They would go from verse to verse, from thought to thought, till suddenly perhaps the tide of feeling would rise, and while the windswept round the house, and the owls hooted in the elms, they would sit hand in hand, lost in love and fait--Christ near them--Eternity, warm with God, enwrapping them. So much for the man of action, the husband, the philanthropist. In reality, great as was the moral energy of this period of Elsmere’s life, the dominant distinguishing note of it was not moral but intellectual. In matters of conduct he was but developing habits and tendencies already strongly present in him; in matters of his thinking, with every month of this winter he was becoming conscious of fresh forces, fresh hunger, fresh horizons. ‘_One half of your day be the king of your world_,’ Mr. Grey had said to him; ‘_the other half be the slave of something which will take you out of your world_, into the general life, the life of thought, of man as a whole, of the universe.’