He hardly knew how much of truth and how much of falsehood there was in his words himself. Although he had played lightly with the idea of going to Darthead--his friend had asked him if he knew of a curate, but it was not certain that he would accept the offer he would make of himself, or that he had not by this time found one--all his thoughts had been taken up with the fight he was going to have with Grafton. It was to have begun that very evening over Grafton's dinner table, with a statement of exactly where he stood that should be unmistakeable. Yesterday he had been unprepared, but now he had his speeches ready; he had been rehearsing some of them when his wife had come in to him. Grafton would knuckle under; men of the Vicar's temperament never allow for answers to the speeches they compose beforehand. He had not projected his mind clearly into the future, as to what should happen after he had gained his victory. Grafton had said that if he stayed on at Abington he should no longer treat him as a friend. Perhaps he imagined him so overcome by his defeat that he would hardly dare to hold aloof from him. Perhaps a little whisper of reason in a corner of his mind prepared him for that complete revulsion of feeling which came to him under his wife's unexpected attack, and made him as eager to escape the contest, and to go, as a few minutes earlier he had been to engage in it and to stay on immoveable. He had hardly had time to gauge the importance of her change of attitude towards him. He had not been able to beat down her awkward enquiries into his conduct as previously he had always nipped the mildest of protests from her, and kept his dominance over her. But he was far from suspecting that his reign of unreason was over. She had gone farther in questioning, and even criticising him, than ever before, but he only had to treat her with a little more care to bring her to his feet again, accepting and for the most part admiring everything that he said or did. But another little whisper of caution from a corner of his mind warned him that he had better cut the knot of the difficulties which had at last aroused that spirit of revolt in her, get away from it all, and start afresh. His mind swung round instantly to a strong desire to get away from it all, and with credit to himself. Before he had finished the speech in which he broached his new-found intention to her, he saw himself leaving Abington with the warmly expressed regrets of his parishioners in his ears; and, if the vision of an illuminated address and a handsome piece of plate did not present itself to him quite so early, it did later.