Then Caroline, being a dutiful wife, and seeing how much he was put out, did her best to soothe him. ‘I don’t think people will notice it,’ she said; ‘not much if you don’t want them to.’ ‘Then you’d better leave off thinking!’ he said. ‘Though I haven’t wanted them to, they _have_ noticed: they’ve done nothing but notice! If you like, I’ll go and put my head into the kitchen now, and you’ll hear that charwoman of yours faint at the mere sight of me.’ ‘No, she won’t,’ said Mrs. Trimblerigg, ‘she’s gone. She lays the table for supper and then goes home, and doesn’t wash up till she comes again in the morning. And it’s Jane’s evening out; so there’ll be nobody.’ These domestic details infuriated him; Caroline was so stupid. And she continued to be. ‘Don’t you think you ought to see a Doctor?’ she inquired. ‘I’ll see the Doctor damned first,’ replied Mr. Trimblerigg. Her suggestion of ice was no better received; it seemed as if she could only annoy him. And then one of the children outside shouted, ‘Mummy, when are we going to have supper?’ ‘Go and give them their supper!’ he said; and his tone was very bitter; bitter against her, and against the children, and against the whole world wanting its supper, while on his head fate had laid this burden of a blessing, too grievous for the flesh to bear. Yes, the flesh; that was the trouble. He saw the spiritual side of it--the symbolic splendour beckoning clear from heights which he could realize but which the world could not. He saw that, but he saw the other side also! There was no public for it; and if no public, where was the good--what could he do with it? Live it down?--or so arrange matters that it should never show? That meant cutting his life in half, and concealing the best of it. There he was, a furtive fugitive in the bosom of his own family; the children wanting their supper, and he avoiding it; yet surely--if this thing was from Heaven--children, his own children at least, ought to be trained to grow accustomed to it, and take a right view of it. Then why not begin? Caroline had gone into the kitchen to get the supper ready. He called her back. ‘I’ll come,’ he said, ‘they’ll have to see it sometime. Tell them--for to-night at any rate--not to make remarks.’ So Mrs. Trimblerigg went off to impose discipline on the family. To the maid she said, ‘you can go out now.’ To the children when the maid had gone: ‘your father has got something the matter with his head. You are not to make remarks.’ Presently she went and told him that supper was ready. A lamp was upon the table; but it wore a shade; Mr. Trimblerigg did not, it would have been no use. He entered the room aware, in that half-light, that he had become conspicuous; nor could he be unconscious of the three pairs of eyes turning upon him an expectant gaze which became riveted. Benjie, the youngest, gave an instinctive squeak of excitement; then, hushed by his mother but forgetting to close his mouth, he dribbled.