Her narrative ended; even its re-assertions and secondary
explanations were done.  Tess's voice throughout had hardly risen
higher than its opening tone; there had been no exculpatory phrase of
any kind, and she had not wept.

But the complexion even of external things seemed to suffer
transmutation as her announcement progressed.  The fire in the grate
looked impish--demoniacally funny, as if it did not care in the least
about her strait.  The fender grinned idly, as if it too did not
care.  The light from the water-bottle was merely engaged in a
chromatic problem.  All material objects around announced their
irresponsibility with terrible iteration.  And yet nothing had
changed since the moments when he had been kissing her; or rather,
nothing in the substance of things.  But the essence of things had
changed.

When she ceased, the auricular impressions from their previous
endearments seemed to hustle away into the corner of their brains,
repeating themselves as echoes from a time of supremely purblind
foolishness.

Clare performed the irrelevant act of stirring the fire; the
intelligence had not even yet got to the bottom of him.  After
stirring the embers he rose to his feet; all the force of her
disclosure had imparted itself now.  His face had withered.  In the
strenuousness of his concentration he treadled fitfully on the floor.
He could not, by any contrivance, think closely enough; that was the
meaning of his vague movement.  When he spoke it was in the most
inadequate, commonplace voice of the many varied tones she had heard
from him.

"Tess!"

"Yes, dearest."

"Am I to believe this?  From your manner I am to take it as true.
O you cannot be out of your mind!  You ought to be!  Yet you are
not...  My wife, my Tess--nothing in you warrants such a supposition
as that?"

"I am not out of my mind," she said.

"And yet--"  He looked vacantly at her, to resume with dazed senses:
"Why didn't you tell me before? Ah, yes, you would have told me, in a
way--but I hindered you, I remember!"

These and other of his words were nothing but the perfunctory babble
of the surface while the depths remained paralyzed.  He turned away,
and bent over a chair.  Tess followed him to the middle of the room,
where he was, and stood there staring at him with eyes that did not
weep.  Presently she slid down upon her knees beside his foot, and
from this position she crouched in a heap.

"In the name of our love, forgive me!" she whispered with a dry
mouth.  "I have forgiven you for the same!"

And, as he did not answer, she said again--

"Forgive me as you are forgiven!  _I_ forgive YOU, Angel."

"You--yes, you do."

"But you do not forgive me?"

"O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case!  You were one
person; now you are another.  My God--how can forgiveness meet such
a grotesque--prestidigitation as that!"

He paused, contemplating this definition; then suddenly broke into
horrible laughter--as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.

"Don't--don't!  It kills me quite, that!" she shrieked.  "O have
mercy upon me--have mercy!"

He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.

"Angel, Angel! what do you mean by that laugh?" she cried out.  "Do
you know what this is to me?"

He shook his head.

"I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy!  I have
thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall
be if I do not!  That's what I have felt, Angel!"

"I know that."

"I thought, Angel, that you loved me--me, my very self!  If it is
I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so?  It
frightens me!  Having begun to love you, I love you for ever--in all
changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself.  I ask no more.
Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?"

"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."

"But who?"

"Another woman in your shape."

She perceived in his words the realization of her own apprehensive
foreboding in former times.  He looked upon her as a species of
imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one.  Terror was
upon her white face as she saw it; her cheek was flaccid, and her
mouth had almost the aspect of a round little hole. The horrible
sense of his view of her so deadened her that she staggered, and he
stepped forward, thinking she was going to fall.

"Sit down, sit down," he said gently.  "You are ill; and it is
natural that you should be."

She did sit down, without knowing where she was, that strained look
still upon her face, and her eyes such as to make his flesh creep.

"I don't belong to you any more, then; do I, Angel?" she asked
helplessly.  "It is not me, but another woman like me that he loved,
he says."

The image raised caused her to take pity upon herself as one who was
ill-used.  Her eyes filled as she regarded her position further; she
turned round and burst into a flood of self-sympathetic tears.

Clare was relieved at this change, for the effect on her of what had
happened was beginning to be a trouble to him only less than the
woe of the disclosure itself.  He waited patiently, apathetically,
till the violence of her grief had worn itself out, and her rush of
weeping had lessened to a catching gasp at intervals.

"Angel," she said suddenly, in her natural tones, the insane, dry
voice of terror having left her now.  "Angel, am I too wicked for
you and me to live together?"

"I have not been able to think what we can do."

"I shan't ask you to let me live with you, Angel, because I have
no right to!  I shall not write to mother and sisters to say we be
married, as I said I would do; and I shan't finish the good-hussif'
I cut out and meant to make while we were in lodgings."

"Shan't you?"

"No, I shan't do anything, unless you order me to; and if you go away
from me I shall not follow 'ee; and if you never speak to me any more
I shall not ask why, unless you tell me I may."

"And if I order you to do anything?"

"I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down
and die."

"You are very good.  But it strikes me that there is a want of
harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past
mood of self-preservation."

These were the first words of antagonism.  To fling elaborate
sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or
cat.  The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and
she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger
ruled.  She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his
affection for her.  She hardly observed that a tear descended slowly
upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the
skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope.
Meanwhile reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her
confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him,
and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which
he stood.  Some consequent action was necessary; yet what?

"Tess," he said, as gently as he could speak, "I cannot stay--in this
room--just now. I will walk out a little way."

He quietly left the room, and the two glasses of wine that he had
poured out for their supper--one for her, one for him--remained on
the table untasted.  This was what their _agape_ had come to.  At
tea, two or three hours earlier, they had, in the freakishness of
affection, drunk from one cup.

The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled
to, roused Tess from her stupor.  He was gone; she could not stay.
Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and
followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back.
The rain was over and the night was now clear.

She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without
purpose.  His form beside her light gray figure looked black,
sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the
jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud.  Clare turned at
hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed
to make no difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning
arches of the great bridge in front of the house.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain
having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away.
Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick
transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining
overhead if she had not seen them there--the vastest things of the
universe imaged in objects so mean.

The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same
valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the
surroundings being open, she kept easily in sight of him.  Away from
the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she
followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract
him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity.

At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and
still he said nothing.  The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great
after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.  The outdoor air
had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse;
she knew that he saw her without irradiation--in all her bareness;
that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then--

   Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee
      shall hate;
   Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate.
   For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
   And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown
      shall be pain.

He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now
insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought.  What a
weak thing her presence must have become to him!  She could not help
addressing Clare.

"What have I done--what HAVE I done!  I have not told of anything
that interferes with or belies my love for you.  You don't think I
planned it, do you?  It is in your own mind what you are angry at,
Angel; it is not in me.  O, it is not in me, and I am not that
deceitful woman you think me!"

"H'm--well.  Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same.  No, not the
same.  But do not make me reproach you.  I have sworn that I will
not; and I will do everything to avoid it."

But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things
that would have been better left to silence.

"Angel!--Angel!  I was a child--a child when it happened!  I knew
nothing of men."

"You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit."

"Then will you not forgive me?"

"I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all."

"And love me?"

To this question he did not answer.

"O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens so!--she knows
several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not
minded it much--has got over it at least.  And yet the woman had not
loved him as I do you!"

"Don't, Tess; don't argue.  Different societies, different manners.
You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who
have never been initiated into the proportions of social things.
You don't know what you say."

"I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!"

She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came.

"So much the worse for you.  I think that parson who unearthed your
pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue.  I cannot
help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of
your want of firmness.  Decrepit families imply decrepit wills,
decrepit conduct.  Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising
you more by informing me of your descent!  Here was I thinking you a
new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of
an effete aristocracy!"

"Lots of families are as bad as mine in that!  Retty's family were
once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett's.  And the
Debbyhouses, who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family.
You find such as I everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I
can't help it."

"So much the worse for the county."

She took these reproaches in their bulk simply, not in their
particulars; he did not love her as he had loved her hitherto, and
to all else she was indifferent.

They wandered on again in silence.  It was said afterwards that a
cottager of Wellbridge, who went out late that night for a doctor,
met two lovers in the pastures, walking very slowly, without
converse, one behind the other, as in a funeral procession, and the
glimpse that he obtained of their faces seemed to denote that they
were anxious and sad.  Returning later, he passed them again in the
same field, progressing just as slowly, and as regardless of the hour
and of the cheerless night as before.  It was only on account of his
preoccupation with his own affairs, and the illness in his house,
that he did not bear in mind the curious incident, which, however, he
recalled a long while after.

During the interval of the cottager's going and coming, she had said
to her husband--

"I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all
your life.  The river is down there.  I can put an end to myself in
it.  I am not afraid."

"I don't wish to add murder to my other follies," he said.

"I will leave something to show that I did it myself--on account of
my shame.  They will not blame you then."

"Don't speak so absurdly--I wish not to hear it.  It is nonsense
to have such thoughts in this kind of case, which is rather one
for satirical laughter than for tragedy.  You don't in the least
understand the quality of the mishap.  It would be viewed in the
light of a joke by nine-tenths of the world if it were known. Please
oblige me by returning to the house, and going to bed."

"I will," said she dutifully.

They had rambled round by a road which led to the well-known ruins of
the Cistercian abbey behind the mill, the latter having, in centuries
past, been attached to the monastic establishment.  The mill still
worked on, food being a perennial necessity; the abbey had perished,
creeds being transient.  One continually sees the ministration of the
temporary outlasting the ministration of the eternal.  Their walk
having been circuitous, they were still not far from the house, and
in obeying his direction she only had to reach the large stone bridge
across the main river and follow the road for a few yards.  When she
got back, everything remained as she had left it, the fire being
still burning.  She did not stay downstairs for more than a minute,
but proceeded to her chamber, whither the luggage had been taken.
Here she sat down on the edge of the bed, looking blankly around,
and presently began to undress.  In removing the light towards the
bedstead its rays fell upon the tester of white dimity; something was
hanging beneath it, and she lifted the candle to see what it was.
A bough of mistletoe.  Angel had put it there; she knew that in an
instant. This was the explanation of that mysterious parcel which it
had been so difficult to pack and bring; whose contents he would not
explain to her, saying that time would soon show her the purpose
thereof.  In his zest and his gaiety he had hung it there.  How
foolish and inopportune that mistletoe looked now.

Having nothing more to fear, having scarce anything to hope, for that
he would relent there seemed no promise whatever, she lay down dully.
When sorrow ceases to be speculative, sleep sees her opportunity.
Among so many happier moods which forbid repose this was a mood which
welcomed it, and in a few minutes the lonely Tess forgot existence,
surrounded by the aromatic stillness of the chamber that had once,
possibly, been the bride-chamber of her own ancestry.

Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house.
Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the
manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon
the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to
a sleeping-couch.  Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and
listened at the door of her apartment.  Her measured breathing told
that she was sleeping profoundly.

"Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of
bitterness at the thought--approximately true, though not wholly
so--that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she
was now reposing without care.

He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her
door again.  In the act he caught sight of one of the d'Urberville
dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's
bedchamber.  In the candlelight the painting was more than
unpleasant.  Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a
concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it seemed to
him then.  The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low--precisely as
Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again
he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between
them.

The check was sufficient.  He resumed his retreat and descended.

His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing
his powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible
sterile expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure.
It was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet who
found no advantage in his enfranchisement.  He was simply regarding
the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness
of things.  Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed
possible all the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour
ago; but

       The little less, and what worlds away!

He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not
indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate
to set him right.  Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes
which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the
tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her
ostensible one, discordant and contrasting?

He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the
light.  The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned
and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his
happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to
swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little
disturbance or change of mien.

Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and furtive, as
though associated with crime.  The fireplace confronted him with its
extinct embers; the spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full
glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her vacated seat and
his own; the other articles of furniture, with their eternal look of
not being able to help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be
done?  From above there was no sound; but in a few minutes there came
a knock at the door.  He remembered that it would be the neighbouring
cottager's wife, who was to minister to their wants while they
remained here.

The presence of a third person in the house would be extremely
awkward just now, and, being already dressed, he opened the window
and informed her that they could manage to shift for themselves that
morning.  She had a milk-can in her hand, which he told her to leave
at the door.  When the dame had gone away he searched in the back
quarters of the house for fuel, and speedily lit a fire.  There was
plenty of eggs, butter, bread, and so on in the larder, and Clare
soon had breakfast laid, his experiences at the dairy having rendered
him facile in domestic preparations.  The smoke of the kindled wood
rose from the chimney without like a lotus-headed column; local
people who were passing by saw it, and thought of the newly-married
couple, and envied their happiness.

Angel cast a final glance round, and then going to the foot of the
stairs, called in a conventional voice--

"Breakfast is ready!"

He opened the front door, and took a few steps in the morning air.
When, after a short space, he came back she was already in the
sitting-room mechanically readjusting the breakfast things.  As she
was fully attired, and the interval since his calling her had been
but two or three minutes, she must have been dressed or nearly so
before he went to summon her.  Her hair was twisted up in a large
round mass at the back of her head, and she had put on one of the
new frocks--a pale blue woollen garment with neck-frillings of
white.  Her hands and face appeared to be cold, and she had possibly
been sitting dressed in the bedroom a long time without any fire.
The marked civility of Clare's tone in calling her seemed to have
inspired her, for the moment, with a new glimmer of hope.  But it
soon died when she looked at him.

The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires.  To the
hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed
as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any
more.

He spoke gently to her, and she replied with a like
undemonstrativeness.  At last she came up to him, looking in his
sharply-defined face as one who had no consciousness that her own
formed a visible object also.

"Angel!" she said, and paused, touching him with her fingers lightly
as a breeze, as though she could hardly believe to be there in the
flesh the man who was once her lover.  Her eyes were bright, her pale
cheek still showed its wonted roundness, though half-dried tears had
left glistening traces thereon; and the usually ripe red mouth was
almost as pale as her cheek.  Throbbingly alive as she was still,
under the stress of her mental grief the life beat so brokenly that
a little further pull upon it would cause real illness, dull her
characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin.

She looked absolutely pure.  Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had
set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed
at her with a stupefied air.

"Tess!  Say it is not true!  No, it is not true!"

"It is true."

"Every word?"

"Every word."

He looked at her imploringly, as if he would willingly have taken a
lie from her lips, knowing it to be one, and have made of it, by some
sort of sophistry, a valid denial. However, she only repeated--

"It is true."

"Is he living?" Angel then asked.

"The baby died."

"But the man?"

"He is alive."

A last despair passed over Clare's face.

"Is he in England?"

"Yes."

He took a few vague steps.

"My position--is this," he said abruptly.  "I thought--any man would
have thought--that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with
social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should
secure rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink cheeks;
but--However, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not."

Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder had not been
needed.  Therein lay just the distress of it; she saw that he had
lost all round.

"Angel--I should not have let it go on to marriage with you if I had
not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you;
though I hoped you would never--"

Her voice grew husky.

"A last way?"

"I mean, to get rid of me.  You CAN get rid of me."

"How?"

"By divorcing me."

"Good heavens--how can you be so simple!  How can I divorce you?"

"Can't you--now I have told you?  I thought my confession would give
you grounds for that."

"O Tess--you are too, too--childish--unformed--crude, I suppose!  I
don't know what you are.  You don't understand the law--you don't
understand!"

"What--you cannot?"

"Indeed I cannot."

A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener's face.

"I thought--I thought," she whispered.  "O, now I see how wicked I
seem to you!  Believe me--believe me, on my soul, I never thought but
that you could!  I hoped you would not; yet I believed, without a
doubt, that you could cast me off if you were determined, and didn't
love me at--at--all!"

"You were mistaken," he said.

"O, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last night!  But I
hadn't the courage.  That's just like me!"

"The courage to do what?"

As she did not answer he took her by the hand.

"What were you thinking of doing?" he inquired.

"Of putting an end to myself."

"When?"

She writhed under this inquisitorial manner of his.  "Last night,"
she answered.

"Where?"

"Under your mistletoe."

"My good--!  How?" he asked sternly.

"I'll tell you, if you won't be angry with me!" she said, shrinking.
"It was with the cord of my box.  But I could not--do the last thing!
I was afraid that it might cause a scandal to your name."

The unexpected quality of this confession, wrung from her, and not
volunteered, shook him perceptibly.  But he still held her, and,
letting his glance fall from her face downwards, he said,  "Now,
listen to this.  You must not dare to think of such a horrible thing!
How could you!  You will promise me as your husband to attempt that
no more."

"I am ready to promise.  I saw how wicked it was."

"Wicked!  The idea was unworthy of you beyond description."

"But, Angel," she pleaded, enlarging her eyes in calm unconcern upon
him, "it was thought of entirely on your account--to set you free
without the scandal of the divorce that I thought you would have to
get.  I should never have dreamt of doing it on mine.  However, to
do it with my own hand is too good for me, after all.  It is you, my
ruined husband, who ought to strike the blow.  I think I should love
you more, if that were possible, if you could bring yourself to do
it, since there's no other way of escape for 'ee.  I feel I am so
utterly worthless!  So very greatly in the way!"

"Ssh!"

"Well, since you say no, I won't.  I have no wish opposed to yours."

He knew this to be true enough.  Since the desperation of the night
her activities had dropped to zero, and there was no further rashness
to be feared.

Tess tried to busy herself again over the breakfast-table with more
or less success, and they sat down both on the same side, so that
their glances did not meet.  There was at first something awkward
in hearing each other eat and drink, but this could not be escaped;
moreover, the amount of eating done was small on both sides.
Breakfast over, he rose, and telling her the hour at which he might
be expected to dinner, went off to the miller's in a mechanical
pursuance of the plan of studying that business, which had been his
only practical reason for coming here.

When he was gone Tess stood at the window, and presently saw his form
crossing the great stone bridge which conducted to the mill premises.
He sank behind it, crossed the railway beyond, and disappeared.
Then, without a sigh, she turned her attention to the room, and began
clearing the table and setting it in order.

The charwoman soon came.  Her presence was at first a strain upon
Tess, but afterwards an alleviation.  At half-past twelve she
left her assistant alone in the kitchen, and, returning to the
sitting-room, waited for the reappearance of Angel's form behind the
bridge.

About one he showed himself.  Her face flushed, although he was a
quarter of a mile off.  She ran to the kitchen to get the dinner
served by the time he should enter.  He went first to the room where
they had washed their hands together the day before, and as he
entered the sitting-room the dish-covers rose from the dishes as if
by his own motion.

"How punctual!" he said.

"Yes.  I saw you coming over the bridge," said she.

The meal was passed in commonplace talk of what he had been doing
during the morning at the Abbey Mill, of the methods of bolting and
the old-fashioned machinery, which he feared would not enlighten him
greatly on modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have been
in use ever since the days it ground for the monks in the adjoining
conventual buildings--now a heap of ruins.  He left the house again
in the course of an hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself
through the evening with his papers.  She feared she was in the way
and, when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she
made herself busy as well as she could for more than an hour.

Clare's shape appeared at the door. "You must not work like this," he
said.  "You are not my servant; you are my wife."

She raised her eyes, and brightened somewhat.  "I may think myself
that--indeed?" she murmured, in piteous raillery.  "You mean in name!
Well, I don't want to be anything more."

"You MAY think so, Tess!  You are.  What do you mean?"

"I don't know," she said hastily, with tears in her accents.  "I
thought I--because I am not respectable, I mean.  I told you I
thought I was not respectable enough long ago--and on that account
I didn't want to marry you, only--only you urged me!"

She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him.  It would almost
have won round any man but Angel Clare.  Within the remote depths of
his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general,
there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a
soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to
traverse it.  It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked
his acceptance of Tess.  Moreover, his affection itself was less fire
than radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he ceased
to believe he ceased to follow: contrasting in this with many
impressionable natures, who remain sensuously infatuated with what
they intellectually despise.  He waited till her sobbing ceased.

"I wish half the women in England were as respectable as you," he
said, in an ebullition of bitterness against womankind in general.
"It isn't a question of respectability, but one of principle!"

He spoke such things as these and more of a kindred sort to her,
being still swayed by the antipathetic wave which warps direct souls
with such persistence when once their vision finds itself mocked by
appearances.  There was, it is true, underneath, a back current of
sympathy through which a woman of the world might have conquered him.
But Tess did not think of this; she took everything as her deserts,
and hardly opened her mouth.  The firmness of her devotion to him was
indeed almost pitiful; quick-tempered as she naturally was, nothing
that he could say made her unseemly; she sought not her own; was not
provoked; thought no evil of his treatment of her.  She might just
now have been Apostolic Charity herself returned to a self-seeking
modern world.

This evening, night, and morning were passed precisely as the
preceding ones had been passed.  On one, and only one, occasion did
she--the formerly free and independent Tess--venture to make any
advances.  It was on the third occasion of his starting after a meal
to go out to the flour-mill.  As he was leaving the table he said
"Goodbye," and she replied in the same words, at the same time
inclining her mouth in the way of his.  He did not avail himself of
the invitation, saying, as he turned hastily aside--

"I shall be home punctually."

Tess shrank into herself as if she had been struck.  Often enough had
he tried to reach those lips against her consent--often had he said
gaily that her mouth and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and
milk and honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew sustenance
from them, and other follies of that sort.  But he did not care for
them now.  He observed her sudden shrinking, and said gently--

"You know, I have to think of a course.  It was imperative that we
should stay together a little while, to avoid the scandal to you that
would have resulted from our immediate parting.  But you must see it
is only for form's sake."

"Yes," said Tess absently.

He went out, and on his way to the mill stood still, and wished for a
moment that he had responded yet more kindly, and kissed her once at
least.

Thus they lived through this despairing day or two; in the same
house, truly; but more widely apart than before they were lovers.  It
was evident to her that he was, as he had said, living with paralyzed
activities in his endeavour to think of a plan of procedure.  She
was awe-stricken to discover such determination under such apparent
flexibility.  His consistency was, indeed, too cruel.  She no longer
expected forgiveness now.  More than once she thought of going away
from him during his absence at the mill; but she feared that this,
instead of benefiting him, might be the means of hampering and
humiliating him yet more if it should become known.

Meanwhile Clare was meditating, verily.  His thought had been
unsuspended; he was becoming ill with thinking; eaten out with
thinking, withered by thinking; scourged out of all his former
pulsating, flexuous domesticity.  He walked about saying to himself,
"What's to be done--what's to be done?" and by chance she overheard
him.  It caused her to break the reserve about their future which had
hitherto prevailed.

"I suppose--you are not going to live with me--long, are you, Angel?"
she asked, the sunk corners of her mouth betraying how purely
mechanical were the means by which she retained that expression of
chastened calm upon her face.

"I cannot" he said, "without despising myself, and what is worse,
perhaps, despising you.  I mean, of course, cannot live with you
in the ordinary sense.  At present, whatever I feel, I do not
despise you.  And, let me speak plainly, or you may not see all my
difficulties.  How can we live together while that man lives?--he
being your husband in nature, and not I.  If he were dead it might
be different...  Besides, that's not all the difficulty; it lies in
another consideration--one bearing upon the future of other people
than ourselves.  Think of years to come, and children being born to
us, and this past matter getting known--for it must get known.  There
is not an uttermost part of the earth but somebody comes from it or
goes to it from elsewhere.  Well, think of wretches of our flesh and
blood growing up under a taunt which they will gradually get to feel
the full force of with their expanding years.  What an awakening
for them!  What a prospect!  Can you honestly say 'Remain' after
contemplating this contingency?  Don't you think we had better
endure the ills we have than fly to others?"

Her eyelids, weighted with trouble, continued drooping as before.

"I cannot say 'Remain,'" she answered, "I cannot; I had not thought
so far."

Tess's feminine hope--shall we confess it?--had been so obstinately
recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a
domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness
even against his judgement.  Though unsophisticated in the usual
sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency
of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies
in propinquity.  Nothing else would serve her, she knew, if this
failed.  It was wrong to hope in what was of the nature of strategy,
she said to herself: yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish.
His last representation had now been made, and it was, as she said,
a new view.  She had truly never thought so far as that, and his
lucid picture of possible offspring who would scorn her was one that
brought deadly convictions to an honest heart which was humanitarian
to its centre.  Sheer experience had already taught her that in some
circumstances there was one thing better than to lead a good life,
and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever.  Like all
who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of
M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, "You shall be
born," particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers.

Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess
had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might
result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had
bewailed as misfortune to herself.

She therefore could not withstand his argument.  But with the
self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto
arose in Clare's own mind, and he almost feared it.  It was based
on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it
promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an Australian upland
or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes, or to
reproach me or you?"  Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted
the momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable.  And she
may have been right.  The intuitive heart of woman knoweth not only
its own bitterness, but its husband's, and even if these assumed
reproaches were not likely to be addressed to him or to his by
strangers, they might have reached his ears from his own fastidious
brain.

It was the third day of the estrangement.  Some might risk the odd
paradox that with more animalism he would have been the nobler man.
We do not say it.  Yet Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a
fault, imaginative to impracticability.  With these natures, corporal
presence is something less appealing than corporal absence; the
latter creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects
of the real.  She found that her personality did not plead her cause
so forcibly as she had anticipated.  The figurative phrase was true:
she was another woman than the one who had excited his desire.

"I have thought over what you say," she remarked to him, moving her
forefinger over the tablecloth, her other hand, which bore the ring
that mocked them both, supporting her forehead.  "It is quite true,
     all of it; it must be.  You must go away from me."

     "But what can you do?"

     "I can go home."

     Clare had not thought of that.

     "Are you sure?" he inquired.

     "Quite sure.  We ought to part, and we may as well get it past and
     done.  You once said that I was apt to win men against their better
     judgement; and if I am constantly before your eyes I may cause you
     to change your plans in opposition to your reason and wish; and
     afterwards your repentance and my sorrow will be terrible."

     "And you would like to go home?" he asked.

     "I want to leave you, and go home."

     "Then it shall be so."

     Though she did not look up at him, she started.  There was a
     difference between the proposition and the covenant, which she had
     felt only too quickly.

     "I feared it would come to this," she murmured, her countenance
     meekly fixed.  "I don't complain, Angel, I--I think it best.  What
     you said has quite convinced me.  Yes, though nobody else should
     reproach me if we should stay together, yet somewhen, years hence,
     you might get angry with me for any ordinary matter, and knowing what
     you do of my bygones, you yourself might be tempted to say words, and
     they might be overheard, perhaps by my own children.  O, what only
     hurts me now would torture and kill me then! I will go--to-morrow."

     "And I shall not stay here.  Though I didn't like to initiate it, I
     have seen that it was advisable we should part--at least for a while,
     till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write
     to you."

     Tess stole a glance at her husband.  He was pale, even tremulous;
     but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the
     depths of this gentle being she had married--the will to subdue the
     grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the
     flesh to the spirit.  Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead
     leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.

     He may have observed her look, for he explained--

     "I think of people more kindly when I am away from them"; adding
     cynically, "God knows; perhaps we will shake down together some day,
     for weariness; thousands have done it!"

     That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and began to pack
     also.  Both knew that it was in their two minds that they might part
     the next morning for ever, despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures
     thrown over their proceeding because they were of the sort to whom
     any parting which has an air of finality is a torture.  He knew,
     and she knew, that, though the fascination which each had exercised
     over the other--on her part independently of accomplishments--would
     probably in the first days of their separation be even more potent
     than ever, time must attenuate that effect; the practical arguments
     against accepting her as a housemate might pronounce themselves more
     strongly in the boreal light of a remoter view.  Moreover, when two
     people are once parted--have abandoned a common domicile and a common
     environment--new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated
     place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are
     forgotten.

Midnight came and passed silently, for there was nothing to announce
it in the Valley of the Froom.

Not long after one o'clock there was a slight creak in the darkened
farmhouse once the mansion of the d'Urbervilles.  Tess, who used the
upper chamber, heard it and awoke.  It had come from the corner step
of the staircase, which, as usual, was loosely nailed.  She saw the
door of her bedroom open, and the figure of her husband crossed the
stream of moonlight with a curiously careful tread.  He was in his
shirt and trousers only, and her first flush of joy died when she
perceived that his eyes were fixed in an unnatural stare on vacancy.
When he reached the middle of the room he stood still and murmured in
tones of indescribable sadness--

"Dead! dead! dead!"

Under the influence of any strongly-disturbing force, Clare would
occasionally walk in his sleep, and even perform strange feats, such
as he had done on the night of their return from market just before
their marriage, when he re-enacted in his bedroom his combat with the
man who had insulted her.  Tess saw that continued mental distress
had wrought him into that somnambulistic state now.

Her loyal confidence in him lay so deep down in her heart, that,
awake or asleep, he inspired her with no sort of personal fear.  If
he had entered with a pistol in his hand he would scarcely have
disturbed her trust in his protectiveness.

Clare came close, and bent over her. "Dead, dead, dead!" he murmured.

After fixedly regarding her for some moments with the same gaze of
unmeasurable woe, he bent lower, enclosed her in his arms, and rolled
her in the sheet as in a shroud.  Then lifting her from the bed with
as much respect as one would show to a dead body, he carried her
across the room, murmuring--

"My poor, poor Tess--my dearest, darling Tess!  So sweet, so good, so
true!"

The words of endearment, withheld so severely in his waking hours,
were inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn and hungry heart.  If it had
been to save her weary life she would not, by moving or struggling,
have put an end to the position she found herself in.  Thus she lay
in absolute stillness, scarcely venturing to breathe, and, wondering
what he was going to do with her, suffered herself to be borne out
upon the landing.

"My wife--dead, dead!" he said.

He paused in his labours for a moment to lean with her against the
banister.  Was he going to throw her down?  Self-solicitude was near
extinction in her, and in the knowledge that he had planned to depart
on the morrow, possibly for always, she lay in his arms in this
precarious position with a sense rather of luxury than of terror.  If
they could only fall together, and both be dashed to pieces, how fit,
how desirable.

However, he did not let her fall, but took advantage of the support
of the handrail to imprint a kiss upon her lips--lips in the day-time
scorned.  Then he clasped her with a renewed firmness of hold, and
descended the staircase.  The creak of the loose stair did not awaken
him, and they reached the ground-floor safely.  Freeing one of his
hands from his grasp of her for a moment, he slid back the door-bar
and passed out, slightly striking his stockinged toe against the edge
of the door.  But this he seemed not to mind, and, having room for
extension in the open air, he lifted her against his shoulder, so
that he could carry her with ease, the absence of clothes taking much
from his burden.  Thus he bore her off the premises in the direction
of the river a few yards distant.

His ultimate intention, if he had any, she had not yet divined; and
she found herself conjecturing on the matter as a third person might
have done.  So easefully had she delivered her whole being up to him
that it pleased her to think he was regarding her as his absolute
possession, to dispose of as he should choose.  It was consoling,
under the hovering terror of to-morrow's separation, to feel that he
really recognized her now as his wife Tess, and did not cast her off,
even if in that recognition he went so far as to arrogate to himself
the right of harming her.

Ah! now she knew what he was dreaming of--that Sunday morning when he
had borne her along through the water with the other dairymaids, who
had loved him nearly as much as she, if that were possible, which
Tess could hardly admit.  Clare did not cross the bridge with her,
but proceeding several paces on the same side towards the adjoining
mill, at length stood still on the brink of the river.

Its waters, in creeping down these miles of meadowland, frequently
divided, serpentining in purposeless curves, looping themselves
around little islands that had no name, returning and re-embodying
themselves as a broad main stream further on.  Opposite the spot to
which he had brought her was such a general confluence, and the river
was proportionately voluminous and deep.  Across it was a narrow
foot-bridge; but now the autumn flood had washed the handrail away,
leaving the bare plank only, which, lying a few inches above the
speeding current, formed a giddy pathway for even steady heads; and
Tess had noticed from the window of the house in the day-time young
men walking across upon it as a feat in balancing.  Her husband had
possibly observed the same performance; anyhow, he now mounted the
plank, and, sliding one foot forward, advanced along it.

Was he going to drown her?  Probably he was.  The spot was lonely,
the river deep and wide enough to make such a purpose easy of
accomplishment.  He might drown her if he would; it would be better
than parting to-morrow to lead severed lives.

The swift stream raced and gyrated under them, tossing, distorting,
and splitting the moon's reflected face.  Spots of froth travelled
past, and intercepted weeds waved behind the piles.  If they could
both fall together into the current now, their arms would be so
tightly clasped together that they could not be saved; they would
go out of the world almost painlessly, and there would be no more
reproach to her, or to him for marrying her.  His last half-hour with
her would have been a loving one, while if they lived till he awoke,
his day-time aversion would return, and this hour would remain to be
contemplated only as a transient dream.

The impulse stirred in her, yet she dared not indulge it, to make a
movement that would have precipitated them both into the gulf.  How
she valued her own life had been proved; but his--she had no right to
tamper with it.  He reached the other side with her in safety.

Here they were within a plantation which formed the Abbey grounds,
and taking a new hold of her he went onward a few steps till they
reached the ruined choir of the Abbey-church.  Against the north wall
was the empty stone coffin of an abbot, in which every tourist with
a turn for grim humour was accustomed to stretch himself.  In this
Clare carefully laid Tess.  Having kissed her lips a second time he
breathed deeply, as if a greatly desired end were attained.  Clare
then lay down on the ground alongside, when he immediately fell into
the deep dead slumber of exhaustion, and remained motionless as a
log.  The spurt of mental excitement which had produced the effort
was now over.

Tess sat up in the coffin.  The night, though dry and mild for the
season, was more than sufficiently cold to make it dangerous for him
to remain here long, in his half-clothed state.  If he were left to
himself he would in all probability stay there till the morning, and
be chilled to certain death.  She had heard of such deaths after
sleep-walking.  But how could she dare to awaken him, and let him
know what he had been doing, when it would mortify him to discover
his folly in respect of her?  Tess, however, stepping out of her
stone confine, shook him slightly, but was unable to arouse him
without being violent.  It was indispensable to do something, for she
was beginning to shiver, the sheet being but a poor protection.  Her
excitement had in a measure kept her warm during the few minutes'
adventure; but that beatific interval was over.

It suddenly occurred to her to try persuasion; and accordingly she
whispered in his ear, with as much firmness and decision as she could
summon--

"Let us walk on, darling," at the same time taking him suggestively
by the arm.  To her relief, he unresistingly acquiesced; her words
had apparently thrown him back into his dream, which thenceforward
seemed to enter on a new phase, wherein he fancied she had risen as a
spirit, and was leading him to Heaven. Thus she conducted him by the
arm to the stone bridge in front of their residence, crossing which
they stood at the manor-house door.  Tess's feet were quite bare, and
the stones hurt her, and chilled her to the bone; but Clare was in
his woollen stockings, and appeared to feel no discomfort.

There was no further difficulty.  She induced him to lie down on his
own sofa bed, and covered him up warmly, lighting a temporary fire of
wood, to dry any dampness out of him.  The noise of these attentions
she thought might awaken him, and secretly wished that they might.
But the exhaustion of his mind and body was such that he remained
undisturbed.

As soon as they met the next morning Tess divined that Angel knew
little or nothing of how far she had been concerned in the night's
excursion, though, as regarded himself, he may have been aware that
he had not lain still.  In truth, he had awakened that morning from
a sleep deep as annihilation; and during those first few moments
in which the brain, like a Samson shaking himself, is trying its
strength, he had some dim notion of an unusual nocturnal proceeding.
But the realities of his situation soon displaced conjecture on the
other subject.

He waited in expectancy to discern some mental pointing; he knew that
if any intention of his, concluded over-night, did not vanish in the
light of morning, it stood on a basis approximating to one of pure
reason, even if initiated by impulse of feeling; that it was so
far, therefore, to be trusted.  He thus beheld in the pale morning
light the resolve to separate from her; not as a hot and indignant
instinct, but denuded of the passionateness which had made it scorch
and burn; standing in its bones; nothing but a skeleton, but none the
less there.  Clare no longer hesitated.

At breakfast, and while they were packing the few remaining articles,
he showed his weariness from the night's effort so unmistakeably that
Tess was on the point of revealing all that had happened; but the
reflection that it would anger him, grieve him, stultify him, to know
that he had instinctively manifested a fondness for her of which his
common-sense did not approve, that his inclination had compromised
his dignity when reason slept, again deterred her.  It was too much
like laughing at a man when sober for his erratic deeds during
intoxication.

It just crossed her mind, too, that he might have a faint
recollection of his tender vagary, and was disinclined to allude to
it from a conviction that she would take amatory advantage of the
opportunity it gave her of appealing to him anew not to go.

He had ordered by letter a vehicle from the nearest town, and
soon after breakfast it arrived.  She saw in it the beginning of
the end--the temporary end, at least, for the revelation of his
tenderness by the incident of the night raised dreams of a possible
future with him.  The luggage was put on the top, and the man drove
them off, the miller and the old waiting-woman expressing some
surprise at their precipitate departure, which Clare attributed to
his discovery that the mill-work was not of the modern kind which he
wished to investigate, a statement that was true so far as it went.
Beyond this there was nothing in the manner of their leaving to
suggest a fiasco, or that they were not going together to visit
friends.

Their route lay near the dairy from which they had started with such
solemn joy in each other a few days back, and as Clare wished to wind
up his business with Mr Crick, Tess could hardly avoid paying Mrs
Crick a call at the same time, unless she would excite suspicion of
their unhappy state.

To make the call as unobtrusive as possible, they left the carriage
by the wicket leading down from the high road to the dairy-house, and
descended the track on foot, side by side.  The withy-bed had been
cut, and they could see over the stumps the spot to which Clare had
followed her when he pressed her to be his wife; to the left the
enclosure in which she had been fascinated by his harp; and far away
behind the cow-stalls the mead which had been the scene of their
first embrace.  The gold of the summer picture was now gray, the
colours mean, the rich soil mud, and the river cold.

Over the barton-gate the dairyman saw them, and came forward,
throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate
in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the
newly-married.  Then Mrs Crick emerged from the house, and several
others of their old acquaintance, though Marian and Retty did not
seem to be there.

Tess valiantly bore their sly attacks and friendly humours, which
affected her far otherwise than they supposed.  In the tacit
agreement of husband and wife to keep their estrangement a secret
they behaved as would have been ordinary.  And then, although she
would rather there had been no word spoken on the subject, Tess had
to hear in detail the story of Marian and Retty.  The later had gone
home to her father's, and Marian had left to look for employment
elsewhere.  They feared she would come to no good.

To dissipate the sadness of this recital Tess went and bade all her
favourite cows goodbye, touching each of them with her hand, and as
she and Clare stood side by side at leaving, as if united body and
soul, there would have been something peculiarly sorry in their
aspect to one who should have seen it truly; two limbs of one life,
as they outwardly were, his arm touching hers, her skirts touching
him, facing one way, as against all the dairy facing the other,
speaking in their adieux as "we", and yet sundered like the poles.
Perhaps something unusually stiff and embarrassed in their attitude,
some awkwardness in acting up to their profession of unity, different
from the natural shyness of young couples, may have been apparent,
for when they were gone Mrs Crick said to her husband--

"How onnatural the brightness of her eyes did seem, and how they
stood like waxen images and talked as if they were in a dream!
Didn't it strike 'ee that 'twas so?  Tess had always sommat strange
in her, and she's not now quite like the proud young bride of a
well-be-doing man."

They re-entered the vehicle, and were driven along the roads towards
Weatherbury and Stagfoot Lane, till they reached the Lane inn, where
Clare dismissed the fly and man.  They rested here a while, and
entering the Vale were next driven onward towards her home by a
stranger who did not know their relations.  At a midway point, when
Nuttlebury had been passed, and where there were cross-roads, Clare
stopped the conveyance and said to Tess that if she meant to return
to her mother's house it was here that he would leave her.  As they
could not talk with freedom in the driver's presence he asked her to
accompany him for a few steps on foot along one of the branch roads;
she assented, and directing the man to wait a few minutes they
strolled away.

"Now, let us understand each other," he said gently.  "There is no
anger between us, though there is that which I cannot endure at
present.  I will try to bring myself to endure it.  I will let you
know where I go to as soon as I know myself.  And if I can bring
myself to bear it--if it is desirable, possible--I will come to you.
But until I come to you it will be better that you should not try to
come to me."

The severity of the decree seemed deadly to Tess; she saw his view of
her clearly enough; he could regard her in no other light than that
of one who had practised gross deceit upon him.  Yet could a woman
who had done even what she had done deserve all this?  But she could
contest the point with him no further.  She simply repeated after him
his own words.

"Until you come to me I must not try to come to you?"

"Just so."

"May I write to you?"

"O yes--if you are ill, or want anything at all.  I hope that will
not be the case; so that it may happen that I write first to you."

"I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my
punishment ought to be; only--only--don't make it more than I can
bear!"

That was all she said on the matter.  If Tess had been artful, had
she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane,
notwithstanding the fury of fastidiousness with which he was
possessed, he would probably not have withstood her.  But her mood
of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was
his best advocate.  Pride, too, entered into her submission--which
perhaps was a symptom of that reckless acquiescence in chance too
apparent in the whole d'Urberville family--and the many effective
chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched.

The remainder of their discourse was on practical matters only.  He
now handed her a packet containing a fairly good sum of money, which
he had obtained from his bankers for the purpose.  The brilliants,
the interest in which seemed to be Tess's for her life only (if he
understood the wording of the will), he advised her to let him send
to a bank for safety; and to this she readily agreed.

These things arranged, he walked with Tess back to the carriage,
and handed her in.  The coachman was paid and told where to drive
her.  Taking next his own bag and umbrella--the sole articles he had
brought with him hitherwards--he bade her goodbye; and they parted
there and then.

The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched it go with an
unpremeditated hope that Tess would look out of the window for one
moment.  But that she never thought of doing, would not have ventured
to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside.  Thus he beheld her recede,
and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with
peculiar emendations of his own--

    God's NOT in his heaven:
    All's WRONG with the world!

When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his
own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still.

As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her
youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor.
Her first thought was how would she be able to face her parents?

She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the highway to the
village.  It was thrown open by a stranger, not by the old man who
had kept it for many years, and to whom she had been known; he had
probably left on New Year's Day, the date when such changes were
made.  Having received no intelligence lately from her home, she
asked the turnpike-keeper for news.

"Oh--nothing, miss," he answered.  "Marlott is Marlott still.  Folks
have died and that.  John Durbeyfield, too, hev had a daughter
married this week to a gentleman-farmer; not from John's own house,
you know; they was married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that
high standing that John's own folk was not considered well-be-doing
enough to have any part in it, the bridegroom seeming not to know
how't have been discovered that John is a old and ancient nobleman
himself by blood, with family skillentons in their own vaults to
this day, but done out of his property in the time o' the Romans.
However, Sir John, as we call 'n now, kept up the wedding-day as well
as he could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish; and John's
wife sung songs at The Pure Drop till past eleven o'clock."

Hearing this, Tess felt so sick at heart that she could not decide
to go home publicly in the fly with her luggage and belongings.  She
asked the turnpike-keeper if she might deposit her things at his
house for a while, and, on his offering no objection, she dismissed
her carriage, and went on to the village alone by a back lane.

At sight of her father's chimney she asked herself how she could
possibly enter the house?  Inside that cottage her relations were
calmly supposing her far away on a wedding-tour with a comparatively
rich man, who was to conduct her to bouncing prosperity; while here
she was, friendless, creeping up to the old door quite by herself,
with no better place to go to in the world.

She did not reach the house unobserved.  Just by the garden-hedge she
was met by a girl who knew her--one of the two or three with whom she
had been intimate at school.  After making a few inquiries as to how
Tess came there, her friend, unheeding her tragic look, interrupted
with--

"But where's thy gentleman, Tess?"

Tess hastily explained that he had been called away on business, and,
leaving her interlocutor, clambered over the garden-hedge, and thus
made her way to the house.

As she went up the garden-path she heard her mother singing by the
back door, coming in sight of which she perceived Mrs Durbeyfield on
the doorstep in the act of wringing a sheet.  Having performed this
without observing Tess, she went indoors, and her daughter followed
her.

The washing-tub stood in the same old place on the same old
quarter-hogshead, and her mother, having thrown the sheet aside, was
about to plunge her arms in anew.

"Why--Tess!--my chil'--I thought you was married!--married really and
truly this time--we sent the cider--"

"Yes, mother; so I am."

"Going to be?"

"No--I am married."

"Married!  Then where's thy husband?"

"Oh, he's gone away for a time."

"Gone away!  When was you married, then?  The day you said?"

"Yes, Tuesday, mother."

"And now 'tis on'y Saturday, and he gone away?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"What's the meaning o' that?  'Nation seize such husbands as you seem
to get, say I!"

"Mother!"  Tess went across to Joan Durbeyfield, laid her face upon
the matron's bosom, and burst into sobs.  "I don't know how to tell
'ee, mother!  You said to me, and wrote to me, that I was not to tell
him.  But I did tell him--I couldn't help it--and he went away!"

"O you little fool--you little fool!" burst out Mrs Durbeyfield,
splashing Tess and herself in her agitation.  "My good God! that ever
I should ha' lived to say it, but I say it again, you little fool!"

Tess was convulsed with weeping, the tension of so many days having
relaxed at last.

"I know it--I know--I know!" she gasped through her sobs.  "But,
O my mother, I could not help it!  He was so good--and I felt
the wickedness of trying to blind him as to what had happened!
If--if--it were to be done again--I should do the same.  I could
not--I dared not--so sin--against him!"

"But you sinned enough to marry him first!"

"Yes, yes; that's where my misery do lie!  But I thought he could get
rid o' me by law if he were determined not to overlook it.  And O, if
you knew--if you could only half know how I loved him--how anxious I
was to have him--and how wrung I was between caring so much for him
and my wish to be fair to him!"

Tess was so shaken that she could get no further, and sank, a
helpless thing, into a chair.

"Well, well; what's done can't be undone!  I'm sure I don't know why
children o' my bringing forth should all be bigger simpletons than
other people's--not to know better than to blab such a thing as
that, when he couldn't ha' found it out till too late!"  Here Mrs
Durbeyfield began shedding tears on her own account as a mother to
be pitied.  "What your father will say I don't know," she continued;
"for he's been talking about the wedding up at Rolliver's and The
Pure Drop every day since, and about his family getting back to their
rightful position through you--poor silly man!--and now you've made
this mess of it!  The Lord-a-Lord!"

As if to bring matters to a focus, Tess's father was heard
approaching at that moment.  He did not, however, enter immediately,
and Mrs Durbeyfield said that she would break the bad news to him
herself, Tess keeping out of sight for the present.  After her first
burst of disappointment Joan began to take the mishap as she had
taken Tess's original trouble, as she would have taken a wet holiday
or failure in the potato-crop; as a thing which had come upon them
irrespective of desert or folly; a chance external impingement to be
borne with; not a lesson.

Tess retreated upstairs and beheld casually that the beds had been
shifted, and new arrangements made.  Her old bed had been adapted for
two younger children.  There was no place here for her now.

The room below being unceiled she could hear most of what went on
there.  Presently her father entered, apparently carrying in a live
hen.  He was a foot-haggler now, having been obliged to sell his
second horse, and he travelled with his basket on his arm.  The hen
had been carried about this morning as it was often carried, to show
people that he was in his work, though it had lain, with its legs
tied, under the table at Rolliver's for more than an hour.

"We've just had up a story about--" Durbeyfield began, and thereupon
related in detail to his wife a discussion which had arisen at the
inn about the clergy, originated by the fact of his daughter having
married into a clerical family. "They was formerly styled 'sir',
like my own ancestry," he said, "though nowadays their true style,
strictly speaking, is 'clerk' only."  As Tess had wished that no
great publicity should be given to the event, he had mentioned no
particulars.  He hoped she would remove that prohibition soon.  He
proposed that the couple should take Tess's own name, d'Urberville,
as uncorrupted.  It was better than her husbands's.  He asked if any
letter had come from her that day.

Then Mrs Durbeyfield informed him that no letter had come, but Tess
unfortunately had come herself.

When at length the collapse was explained to him, a sullen
mortification, not usual with Durbeyfield, overpowered the influence
of the cheering glass.  Yet the intrinsic quality of the event moved
his touchy sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect upon the
minds of others.

"To think, now, that this was to be the end o't!" said Sir John.
"And I with a family vault under that there church of Kingsbere as
big as Squire Jollard's ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes
and sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any recorded in
history.  And now to be sure what they fellers at Rolliver's and The
Pure Drop will say to me!  How they'll squint and glane, and say,
'This is yer mighty match is it; this is yer getting back to the true
level of yer forefathers in King Norman's time!' I feel this is too
much, Joan; I shall put an end to myself, title and all--I can bear
it no longer! ...  But she can make him keep her if he's married
her?"

"Why, yes. But she won't think o' doing that."

"D'ye think he really have married her?--or is it like the first--"

Poor Tess, who had heard as far as this, could not bear to hear more.
The perception that her word could be doubted even here, in her own
parental house, set her mind against the spot as nothing else could
have done.  How unexpected were the attacks of destiny!  And if her
father doubted her a little, would not neighbours and acquaintance
doubt her much?  O, she could not live long at home!

A few days, accordingly, were all that she allowed herself here, at
the end of which time she received a short note from Clare, informing
her that he had gone to the North of England to look at a farm.  In
her craving for the lustre of her true position as his wife, and to
hide from her parents the vast extent of the division between them,
she made use of this letter as her reason for again departing,
leaving them under the impression that she was setting out to join
him.  Still further to screen her husband from any imputation of
unkindness to her, she took twenty-five of the fifty pounds Clare
had given her, and handed the sum over to her mother, as if the wife
of a man like Angel Clare could well afford it, saying that it was a
slight return for the trouble and humiliation she had brought upon
them in years past.  With this assertion of her dignity she bade them
farewell; and after that there were lively doings in the Durbeyfield
household for some time on the strength of Tess's bounty, her mother
saying, and, indeed, believing, that the rupture which had arisen
between the young husband and wife had adjusted itself under their
strong feeling that they could not live apart from each other.

Angel cannot forgive Tess for her past: "O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another." Tess is dumbfounded by Angel's reaction and seeks to have him understand her plight. He cannot see her past as she sees it. Tess suggests that they will no longer be able to live together and that she could end his suffering through divorce or her own suicide. Angel rejects both propositions. He adds injury to insult saying, "Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit conduct." Tess is nearly speechless. Instead of remaining with his wife on their honeymoon night, Angel sleeps on the couch downstairs. The next morning, Angel is the first to speak, suggesting a reconciliation, but it is a false hope. The couple, sure of marital bliss, now must decide what is to happen next. Tess tries to make her point clear, to bring Angel around to her viewpoint. She accepts her punishment, "she took everything as her deserts." She asks Angel, "You are not going to live with me -- long, are you, Angel?" He responds, "I cannot." Finally, Angel suggests that Tess go home to her family in Marlott. She agrees. During the night, Angel, in a deep sleep-walking state, comes to Tess' room and carries her out into the night. He mumbles that his wife is "Dead, dead, dead!" Tess does not dare disturb this sleep episode. Angel seems to be recalling the incident in which he carried the milkmaids at Talbothays , taking Tess over a river and into a small ruined chapel, where he lays her in an empty stone coffin. He lies down beside her, continuing to sleep. Tess rouses him carefully and leads him back to the couch in their house. The next morning, Tess does not tell Angel of the evening's events as he begins to pack their belongings for their trip to Talbothays and, from there, to Marlott, Tess' home. At Talbothays, the couple do not disclose their discord. Angel gives Tess a good sum of money before he leaves her and tells her to write to him via his parents if she needs anything. Then he leaves Tess near the entrance to her hometown. Tess enters the town through a back route, going unnoticed into her family's home. When Tess tells her mother of her plight, the two cry over the events. Joan suggests that Tess hide in the house when her father returns so that Joan can prepare John for the shock of a marriage begun and ended in three days. John is indeed astonished, and Tess resolves to remain only a few days at home. During the short period that she is home, Tess receives a letter from Angel telling her he is in the north of England searching for a farm. Tess gives her mother half her money from Angel and leaves home.

Angel is surprised by Tess' revelation. Although Tess had tried several times to recount her sad history, Angel ignored her pleas. Yet, upon hearing her story, he cannot forgive her. The reasons for Angel's intractability are not clear. The best reason that he gives is that one day their children will find out and Tess will have to tell them about the rape and birth of another baby. Perhaps the most telling line from Angel is "O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another." In truth, however, it is not Tess who has changed, but Angel's perception of her. He cannot reconcile in his own mind how a woman who experienced what she has experienced can be the same woman he fell in love with. Hardy tells us that "ithin the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit . . . which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it . . . and with regarding to the other sex, when he ceased to believe he ceased to follow" and that he "looked upon  as a species of imposter; a guilty woman in the guise of an innocent one." During the disclosure of their pasts on their wedding night, it seems clear that each history is equal in scope and severity. Why the disparate punishments? Hardy seems to answer that, even though the crimes are equal, the punishments are often not equal. Angel can escape with little punishment while Tess must be made to suffer a long period of intense suffering. Here, Hardy shows the difference in society's moral code for men and women. Although Angel's past transgressions can be forgiven, Tess', because she is a woman, cannot. And so Tess must bear not only the punishment, but the nagging concern that her sentence is too harsh. Glossary Good-hussif  good housewife. dimity a thin, corded or patterned cotton cloth. Apostolic Charity Charity as described by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. propinquity nearness in time or place. M. Sully-Prudhomme French poet and essayist . fiat an order issued by legal authority, usually beginning with fiat ; decree. Vulpine slyness of or like a fox or foxes; clever, cunning. proclivity a natural or habitual tendency or inclination, esp. toward something discreditable. somnambulistic getting up and moving about in a trance-like state while asleep. beatific making blissful or blessed.