‘I think I’ll go out for a turn by myself,’ he said. Then stopped; for outside it was dark. He went into the bedroom instead; and Caroline took advantage of his absence, though too late for it to get through that night, to go and send off a telegram. It was addressed to Davidina, and it merely repeated what she had said to the children: ‘Jonathan has something the matter with his head. Come at once.’ But though that was her view of it, Caroline had no notion how much really was the matter with his head--having only seen the malady in its fainter and less convincing manifestations; she had not encountered it in the dark. When she went up to bed she found him already in it, with a lamp on the table beside him, reading; and at first, as she looked at him, she thought he was already cured; the globe of light had become quite unapparent. Wise in her way, instead of exclaiming on the fact, she said nothing. ‘Better wait,’ she thought, ‘and give it time,’--hoping that by the morning he would have quite got over it. And so with composed leisure, she went first to bed, and then presently to sleep, leaving him still at his reading. And only when Mr. Trimblerigg was quite sure she was safely asleep, did he put out the light and resign himself to the rest he so much needed. The reason was that Caroline’s composed materialism had got upon his nerves; her detached reception of Martin’s godly suggestion had dealt him the shrewdest blow of all. So little apparently was her mind open to conviction of a spiritual kind, that she had passed it over as not worth a thought. But in this Mr. Trimblerigg did Caroline an injustice; she was merely dense to nuances; half-tones had not impressed her, and a thing which she could only half-see she could only half-believe in. It was far otherwise when, waking up in the small hours, she beheld Mr. Trimblerigg’s head, unconscious but luminous, lying in a charger of golden light--light so strong that she might have read by it. So overwhelming was the effect of it then, that she got out of bed, fell upon her knees beside him, and in meek simplicity, though a little late in the day, gave him the worship which was his due; for now truly he looked beautiful. Her mind experienced a revulsion; he had been concealing himself from her. All these years she had been married to a holy man and had not known it; had even had her doubts of him. Now they were gone; that he should be able to look like that while unconscious and asleep, convinced her utterly. Contrite, she wept. How could she guess that in his sleep he was only carrying on with so much more success that to which conscious life presented difficulties? Mr. Trimblerigg was having a pleasant dream. CHAPTER TWENTY “_The Desire of the Moth for the Star_”