Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the
evening slowly deepened into night. But the struggle changed
continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards
striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike. The energy
that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a
resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.
That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband--her
conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his
work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long
without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking
at her anger with sad remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured
sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those
sorrows--but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was
still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon
habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside
in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his
hand. If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and
even risk incurring another pang. She would never again expect
anything else. But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the
light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the
carpet. When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face
was more haggard. He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up
at him beseechingly, without speaking.
"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. "Were you
waiting for me?"
"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."
"Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life
by watching."
When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears,
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we
had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand into
her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together.