awakening Clym. "Well, if that
means that your marriage is a misfortune to you, you know who is to
blame," said Wildeve.

"The marriage is no misfortune in itself," she retorted with some
little petulance. "It is simply the accident which has happened since
that has been the cause of my ruin. I have certainly got thistles for
figs in a worldly sense, but how could I tell what time would bring
forth?"

"Sometimes, Eustacia, I think it is a judgment upon you. You rightly
belonged to me, you know; and I had no idea of losing you."

"No, it was not my fault! Two could not belong to you; and remember
that, before I was aware, you turned aside to another woman. It was
cruel levity in you to do that. I never dreamt of playing such a game
on my side till you began it on yours."

"I meant nothing by it," replied Wildeve. "It was a mere interlude.
Men are given to the trick of having a passing fancy for somebody else
in the midst of a permanent love, which reasserts itself afterwards
just as before. On account of your rebellious manner to me I was
tempted to go further than I should have done; and when you still
would keep playing the same tantalizing part I went further still,
and married her." Turning and looking again at the unconscious form
of Clym, he murmured, "I am afraid that you don't value your prize,
Clym... He ought to be happier than I in one thing at least. He may
know what it is to come down in the world, and to be afflicted with a
great personal calamity; but he probably doesn't know what it is to
lose the woman he loved."

"He is not ungrateful for winning her," whispered Eustacia, "and in
that respect he is a good man. Many women would go far for such a
husband. But do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called
life--music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing
that are going on in the great arteries of the world? That was the
shape of my youthful dream; but I did not get it. Yet I thought I saw
the way to it in my Clym."

"And you only married him on that account?"

"There you mistake me. I married him because I loved him, but I won't
say that I didn't love him partly because I thought I saw a promise of
that life in him."

"You have dropped into your old mournful key."

"But I am not going to be depressed," she cried perversely. "I began
a new system by going to that dance, and I mean to stick to it. Clym
can sing merrily; why should not I?"

Wildeve looked thoughtfully