can't keep him
on. His wages are too high for me. It won't run to it. Th' truth is,
I'm going to chuck this art business. It doesn't pay. Art, as they
call it, 's no good in th' pottery trade."

Rachel said, "So that's what you wanted to see him about on a Sunday
morning, is it, Mr. Horrocleave?"

She was a little hurt at the slight on her husband, but the wife
in her was persuaded that the loss would be Mr. Horrocleave's.
She foresaw that Louis would now want to use his capital in some
commercial undertaking of his own; and she was afraid of the prospect.
Still, it had to be faced, and she would face it. He would probably do
well as his own master. During a whole horrible week her judgment on
him had been unjustly severe, and she did not mean to fall into the
same sin again. She thought with respect of his artistic gifts, which
she was too inartistic to appreciate. Yes, the chances were that he
would succeed admirably.

She walked him off to church, giving Horrocleave a perfunctory
good-bye. And as, shoulder to shoulder, they descended towards St.
Luke's, she looked sideways at Louis and fed her passion stealthily
with the sight. True, even in those moments, she had heart enough left
to think of others besides.

She hoped that John's Ernest would find a suitable mate. She
remembered that she had Julian's curtains to attend to. She continued
to think kindly of Thomas Batchgrew, and she chid herself for having
thought of him in her distant inexperienced youth, of six months
earlier, as _that man_. And, regretting that Mrs. Tams--at her
age, too!--could be so foolish, she determined to look after Mrs.
Tams also, if need should arise. But these solicitudes were mere downy
trifles floating on the surface of her profound absorption in Louis.
And in the depths of that absorption she felt secure, and her courage
laughed at the menace of life (though the notion of braving a church
full of people did intimidate the bride). Yet she judged Louis
realistically and not sentimentally. She was not conspicuously blind
to any aspect of his character; nor had the tremendous revulsion of
the previous night transformed him into another and a more heavenly
being for her. She admitted frankly to herself that he was not
blameless in the dark affair of the bank-notes. She would not deny
that in some ways he was untrustworthy, and might be capable of acts
of which the consequences were usually terrible. His irresponsibility
was notorious.