"And then would she allow she had wanted it when you got it her?" "No, never, sir. She be peculiar--my wife; she always be." "Does she know that you have come to ask me now?" "No, sir." "Have you courage to tell her?" The man hesitated. "If you haven't courage to tell her," I resumed, "I have nothing more to say. I can't go; or, rather, I will not go." "I will tell her, sir." "Then you will tell her that I refused to come until she sent for me herself." "Ben't that rather hard on a dying woman, sir?" "I have my reasons. Except she send for me herself, the moment I go she will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your wife's peculiarity too, Mr. Stokes." "Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It's time to speak my own mind." "I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the middle of the night, I shall be with her at once." He left me and I returned to Percivale. "I was just thinking before you came," I said, "about the relation of Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I often think about the truths that lie at the root of it." "I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "for talking about these things. I assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I always think the professions should not herd together so much as they do; they want to be shone upon from other quarters." "I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself could give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the reflective power of the airy particles through which he shines. But anything I know I have found out merely by foraging for my own necessities." "That is just what makes the result valuable," he replied. "Tell me what you were thinking." "I was thinking," I answered, "how everyone likes to see his own thoughts set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_ as the philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it were." "Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at all."