Caroline handed him the letters, and as after sorting them through he seemed in no hurry to open them--Davidina’s she noticed, he put aside from the rest--she opened, on her own account, the matter wherewith she was charged. The Presence had begun to manifest itself again, though not as powerfully yet, as at the moment which had brought her to her knees and to conversion. She was moved, feeling very humble towards him; and her eyes grew full of tears. ‘I am sorry, Jonathan, I have misjudged you,’ she said. The announcement, though it surprised, rather pleased him; for he saw plainly by her look that misjudgment was over. ‘How have you misjudged me, my dear?’ he asked. ‘I--I didn’t think you were always quite straight,’ she said. ‘Straight’: the word had a certain sting. It stirred faintly the slumbers of that small sleeping dog--his conscience, which he was so accustomed to let lie. Then his sure instinct for defence brought him gaily to the attack. ‘Oh, yes, I know, my dear child, sometimes you’ve been jealous.’ ‘No, no, never really,’ she said, ‘only I know I’m stupid--so, of course, sometimes--’ At that she left it and returned to her point--the point she had been wondrously cogitating all day in her slow mind. ‘No, I mean straight in quite little things. You see, Jonathan, I know now Martin was right. I haven’t understood you--not properly. And when I say ‘not straight,’ I mean in such little, little things, that never seemed to matter till now.’ This was a new experience altogether. Caroline was thoroughly surprising him. ‘How didn’t you think I was straight?’ he asked. ‘Well, for one thing,’ she replied, ‘I know now that you _do_ take your cold bath. I thought you didn’t.’ Had Heaven thundered and shaken off the roof, leaving nothing above but bare sky, Mr. Trimblerigg could not have been more startled than at those words. To poor honest Caroline, the acceptance of the spiritual interpretation of what had happened to him meant, meant necessarily that he had always not merely been good in his own sense of the term, but done the straight thing--taken his baths, and in all quite small things told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And then, on the top of that, while the shock of it still reverberated through his soul, Caroline let go the thing she had come to tell him. ‘Davidina is coming,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, Jonathan, I didn’t understand then. And when you refused to see a doctor I telegraphed for her.’ ‘What did you tell her?’ ‘Only that you’d got something the matter with your head. She’s coming by the late train. It’s nearly due.’ He sat so still that she grew frightened. She reached out a hand and touched him. ‘Go away,’ he said, ‘let me alone!’ And weeping she got up and left him.