His lids closed, then opened again: he had almost gone to sleep with the light still on. ‘Crocean dawn’: half consciously he switched it off--not the dawn, the light; and with the crocean dawn still in his head slept till morning. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN _Nouveau Riche_ A Crocean dawn was outside and around him when he awoke--yellow, of the metropolitan variety; it was, that is to say, a fog. But in spite of the dullness of the outer world, Mr. Trimblerigg awoke happy, with the happiness of a man whose prayer has been answered. For many days he had been praying fervently that his character might be placed above suspicion: and now that Davidina’s suspicion of him had gone, and his own with it, he had just everything for the present that he could pray for. And on the top of it, he had forgiven an enemy--in such a way that, if he did not miscalculate, his enemy would presently have to forgive him. There, in that purified spiritual atmosphere, another great work was awaiting him. All omens were auspicious; he knew now for certain that he was going to achieve fame, and that very soon, among the Free Churches, he would be able to have almost whatever position he liked, and do almost anything he chose. And so, as he got up in that crocean dawn, he felt all about him, but especially in his brain, an effusing sense of well-being and happiness. And as he looked at himself in the glass before shaving, he smiled: and it seemed to him then that his countenance was wonderfully bright. Presently, as he shaved, he began to have a suspicion that the illumination was different and strange: that there was a curious absence of shadow about his chubby cheeks and under his chin, which made shaving easy; and this, too, on a dark morning. This fact only dawned on him gradually; for close above his head hung the electric pendant, with its bulb of powerful light directed downwards by the white porcelain shade. But when, thoughtful of the high price of electricity, he turned it out and once more faced his glass to give a final polish to his hair, there could no longer be any doubt that he was in the presence of something which waited to be explained--something too mysterious, too incredible to be described as a phenomenon. ‘Crocean dawn’: the embodied phrase looked him in the face. But how had it located itself? Was it physical, or spiritual, or was it only mental? ‘Miracle’ he did not think of calling it; his Free Church upbringing had given him an instinctive repugnance to such Romish things as modern miracles; though he admitted the possibility (but that was different) of miraculous answer to prayer. But miracles of a personal and a phenomenal kind he regarded with a certain suspicion--had indeed published in _The Rock of Ages_ an article against them, wherein, with unrelenting logic, he had traced them to spiritual agencies--if spiritual they might be called--not of good but of evil. And now--this!