Having alighted on the pavement, feeling painfully the concentration of at least twenty-four pairs of eyes upon his back, he put up his umbrella to cut off the view, though it had really ceased to rain, and made haste away. Somebody had got out after him. He heard steps insistently close following him; then a voice speaking the American accent. ‘Say! pardon me, sir. Do you mind telling whether you are advertising that as a patent? Can be got anywhere?’ ‘No, it can’t exactly be got,’ said Mr. Trimblerigg, whose own more insistent question was whether it could be got rid of. ‘It isn’t mine. I’m just trying it.’ ‘It’s very remarkable, very striking,’ said his interlocutor. ‘There’s a future in that contraption, sure; or I’m much mistaken. You’ve patented it, I suppose, before bringing it out? If you’re needing capital to develop it, I’m your man.’ ‘No, no,’ said Mr. Trimblerigg hastily. ‘I don’t want to develop it. It’s developing itself; and--and,’ he hesitated--‘it isn’t for sale!’ Then, trying for once to have courage, and stand a faithful witness for truth: ‘It’s not what you think it is,’ he said. ‘It’s not material; it’s spiritual--a visitation; but the revelation of its meaning has not yet come to me.’ And so saying he took a perilous run into the traffic, and dodging death on nimble feet, got safely away to the other side. He left behind him a stunned patriot. ‘America, you’re beaten!’ said the voice with the accent. CHAPTER NINETEEN _The Conversion of Caroline_ Mr. Trimblerigg joined his family in a small retired bungalow, standing between estuary and sea, on the outskirts of a large health-resort looking south. It was the very place for him to be--if not exactly alone--unobserved. The shore was shadeless; across an arm of the estuary a rickety foot-bridge led to copse and field, and across the railroad to a wide expanse of heath. After that came the littered margin of the town, with its cheap and scrubby architecture run up as a trap for holiday-makers. He had arrived by daylight, and occupying a window-seat on the sunny side of the carriage had managed to get through without further adventures. At the office also he had done fairly well, entering by the door marked ‘private,’ and working with the electric light well over him. His children, who always loved him when they saw him, but forgot him easily again in absence, ran boisterously to greet him, and each in turn entered the charmed circle without making remark. So did Caroline. They kissed him, noticing nothing. This cheered him, but he knew it could only be for a time, and as soon as they got to ‘The Mollusc,’ which was the bungalow’s name, he said to his wife, ‘I want to speak to you,’ and drawing her into a room apart, waited--to see.