asaubon's ear, Dorothea's voice gave loud emphatic iteration to
those muffled suggestions of consciousness which it was possible to
explain as mere fancy, the illusion of exaggerated sensitiveness:
always when such suggestions are unmistakably repeated from without,
they are resisted as cruel and unjust. We are angered even by the full
acceptance of our humiliating confessions--how much more by hearing in
hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those
confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if
they were the oncoming of numbness! And this cruel outward accuser was
there in the shape of a wife--nay, of a young bride, who, instead of
observing his abundant pen-scratches and amplitude of paper with the
uncritical awe of an elegant-minded canary-bird, seemed to present
herself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference.
Here, towards this particular point of the compass, Mr. Casaubon had a
sensitiveness to match Dorothea's, and an equal quickness to imagine
more than the fact. He had formerly observed with approbation her
capacity for worshipping the right object; he now foresaw with sudden
terror that this capacity might be replaced by presumption, this
worship by the most exasperating of all criticism,--that which sees
vaguely a great many fine ends, and has not the least notion what it
costs to reach them.

For the first time since Dorothea had known him, Mr. Casaubon's face
had a quick angry flush upon it.

"My love," he said, with irritation reined in by propriety, "you may
rely upon me for knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to the
different stages of a work which is not to be measured by the facile
conjectures of ignorant onlookers. It had been easy for me to gain a
temporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it is ever the
trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn
of chatterers who attempt only the smallest achievements, being indeed
equipped for no other. And it were well if all such could be
admonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subject-matter
lies entirely beyond their reach, from those of which the elements may
be compassed by a narrow and superficial survey."

This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual
with Mr. Casaubon. It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, but
had taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the round
grains from a frui