her's days of spiritual depression, and the few difficult words she
had sometimes heard from him as to those bitter times of religious
dryness and hopelessness, by which God chastens from time to time His
most faithful and heroic souls. A half-contempt awoke in her for the
unclouded serenity and confidence of her own inner life. If her own
spiritual experience had gone deeper, she told herself with the
strangest self-blame, she would have been able now to understand Robert
better--to help him more.

She thought as she lay awake after those painful moments in the study,
the tears welling up slowly in the darkness, of many things that had
puzzled her in the past. She remembered the book she had seen on his
table; her thoughts travelled over his months of intercourse with the
squire; and the memory of Mr. Newcome's attitude towards the man whom he
conceived to be his Lord's adversary, as contrasted with Robert's,
filled her with a shrinking pain she dared not analyse.

Still all through, her feeling towards her husband was in the main akin
to that of the English civilian at home towards English soldiers abroad,
suffering and dying that England may be great. _She_ had sheltered
herself all her life from those deadly forces of unbelief which exist in
English society, by a steady refusal to know what, however, any educated
university man must perforce know. But such a course of action was
impossible for Robert. He had been forced into the open, into the full
tide of the Lord's battle. The chances of that battle are many; and the
more courage the more risk of wounds and pain. But the great Captain
knows--the great Captain does not forget His own!

For never, never had she the smallest doubt as to the issue of this
sudden crisis in her husband's consciousness, even when she came nearest
to apprehending its nature. As well might she doubt the return of
daylight, as dream of any permanent eclipse descending upon the faith
which had shone through every detail of Robert's ardent impulsive life,
with all its struggles, all its failings, all its beauty, since she had
known him first. The dread did not even occur to her. In her agony of
pity and reverence she thought of him as passing through a trial, which
is specially the believer's trial--the chastening by which God proves
the soul He loves. Let her only love and trust in patience.

So that day by day as Robert's depression still continued, Catherine
surrounded him with the tend