 their imagination and
love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine communion and light
divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor man, clung low and
mist-like in very shady places.
    Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had stepped
into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband. But she
hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her ardour,
continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to heighten her dread, as
thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she wandered slowly round the
nearer clumps of trees until she saw him advancing. Then she went towards him,
and might have represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the
short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings
the closer to a comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill
that she felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand through
his arm.
    Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to cling
with difficulty against his rigid arm.
    There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too
strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are for
ever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the
devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of
sweetness - calling their denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of
manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his was a
mind which shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such a mind the effect of
a suspicion that what is pressing it as a grief may be really a source of
contentment, either actual or future, to the being who already offends by
pitying? Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected
that on such an occasion as the present they were comparable in strength to his
own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.
    Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak. Mr.
Casaubon did not say, »I wish to be alone,« but he directed his steps in silence
towards the house, and as they entered by the glass door on this eastern side,
Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on the matting, that she might leave her
husband quite free. He entered the library and shut himself in, alone with his
sorrow.
    She went up to
