At the sound of that at once unhuman and singularly confidential voice close beside him, George Lovegrove gave a guilty start. "Yes, the wife is quite right," he said, half aloud. "If you want to keep a happy mind there is very much of which it is as well to be ignorant." Then shame covered him, for in his recent meditations and apprehensions had he not come very near turning traitor, and being, in imagination at all events, subtly unfaithful to that same large kindly comfortable wife? CHAPTER XXII Two months had passed, and February was about to give place to March--two months empty of outward event for Dominic Iglesias, but big with thought and consolidation of purpose. He had been more than ever solitary during this period, for his acquaintance, even to the faithful George Lovegrove, stood aloof. But Dominic hardly noticed this. Though solitary, he had not been lonely, since his mind was absorbed in question, in pursuit, in the consciousness of deepening conviction. For the recognition not merely of religion, but of Christianity, as a supreme factor in earthly existence, which had come to him in the dreary December twilight, as, broken in health and in spirit, he gazed upon the carven picture of Calvary, had proved no fugitive experience. It remained by him, entracing his imagination and satisfying both his heart and his intelligence; so that he looked back upon the hour of his despair thankfully, seeing in it the starting-point of a journey the prosecution of which promised not only to be the main occupation of his remaining years here in time, but, the river of death once crossed, to stretch onward and onward through realms, at present inconceivable, of beauty, of knowledge, and of love. And so, for the moment, solitude was sweet to him, leaving him free of petty cares and anxieties--he moving forward, ignorant of the gossip which in point of fact surrounded him, innocent of the feminine plots and counterplots of which his blameless bachelorhood was at once the provoking cause and the object; while in his eyes--though of this, too, he was ignorant--dwelt increasingly reflection of that mysterious and lovely light which, let obstinately purblind man deny it as he may, lies forever along the far horizon, for comfort of godly wayfarers and as beacon of the elect. Yet it must not be supposed that the outset of Iglesias' spiritual journey was wholly serene, free from obstacle or hesitation, from risk of untoward selection, or rejection, of the safe way. Many roads, and those bristling with contradictory signposts, presented themselves. Noisy touts, each crying up his own special mode and means of conveyance, rushed forth at every turn.