PLEASE
will you, keep from questioning me? You must remember that we are
now strangers."

"Strangers--are we? Strangers!"

For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face; but he
determinedly chastened it down.

"Is that man your husband?" he asked mechanically, denoting by a sign
the labourer who turned the machine.

"That man!" she said proudly. "I should think not!"

"Who, then?"

"Do not ask what I do not wish to tell!" she begged, and flashed her
appeal to him from her upturned face and lash-shadowed eyes.

D'Urberville was disturbed.

"But I only asked for your sake!" he retorted hotly. "Angels of
heaven!--God forgive me for such an expression--I came here, I swear,
as I thought for your good. Tess--don't look at me so--I cannot
stand your looks! There never were such eyes, surely, before
Christianity or since! There--I won't lose my head; I dare not.
I own that the sight of you had waked up my love for you, which, I
believed, was extinguished with all such feelings. But I thought
that our marriage might be a sanctification for us both. 'The
unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving
wife is sanctified by the husband,' I said to myself. But my plan
is dashed from me; and I must bear the disappointment!"

He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground.

"Married. Married! ... Well, that being so," he added, quite
calmly, tearing the licence slowly into halves and putting them in
his pocket; "that being prevented, I should like to do some good to
you and your husband, whoever he may be. There are many questions
that I am tempted to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in
opposition to your wishes. Though, if I could know your husband, I
might more easily benefit him and you. Is he on this farm?"

"No," she murmured. "He is far away."

"Far away? From YOU? What sort of husband can he be?"

"O, do not speak against him! It was through you! He found out--"

"Ah, is it so! ... That's sad, Tess!"

"Yes."

"But to stay away from you--to leave you to work like this!"

"He does not leave me to work!" she cried, springing to the defence
of the absent one with all her fervour. "He don't know it! It is by
my own arrangement."

"Then, does he write?"

"I--I cannot tell you. There are things which are private to
ourselves."

"Of course that means that he does not. You are a deserted wife, my
fair Tess--"

In an impulse he turned suddenly to t