And Catherine? Naturally this new and most unexpected relation of Robert’s to the man who had begun by insulting him was of considerable importance to the wife. In the first place it broke up to some extent the exquisite _tête-à-tête_ of their home life; it encroached often upon time that had always been hers; it filled Robert’s mind more and more with matters in which she had no concern. All these things many wives might have resented. Catherine Elsmere resented none of them. It is probable, of course, that she had her natural moments of regret and comparison when love said to itself a little sorely and hungrily, ‘It is hard to be even a fraction less to him then I once was?’ But if so, these moments never betrayed themselves in word or act. Her tender common sense, her sweet humility, made her recognize at once Robert’s need of intellectual comradeship, isolated as he was in this remote rural district. She knew perfectly that a clergyman’s life of perpetual giving forth becomes morbid and unhealthy if there is not some corresponding taking in. If only it had not been Mr. Wendover! She marvelled over the fascination Robert found in his dry cynical talk. She wondered that a Christian pastor could ever forget Mr. Wendover’s antecedents; that the man who had nursed those sick children could forgive Mile End. All in all as they were to each other, she felt for the first time that she often understood her husband imperfectly. His mobility, his eagerness, were sometimes now a perplexity, even a pain to her. It must not be imagined, however, that Robert let himself drift into this intellectual intimacy with one of the most distinguished of anti-Christian thinkers without reflecting on its possible consequences. The memory of that night of misery which “The Idols of the Market Place” had inflicted on him was enough. He was no match in controversy for Mr. Wendover, and he did not mean to attempt it. One morning the Squire unexpectedly plunged into an account of a German monograph he had just received on the subject of the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel. It was almost the first occasion on which he had touched what may strictly be called the _matériel_ of orthodoxy in their discussions--at any rate directly. But the book was a striking one, and in the interest of it he had clearly forgotten his ground a little. Suddenly the man who was walking beside him interrupted him.