called you by a foul name; and then I did it. My heart could not
bear it. He had nagged me about you before. And then I dressed
myself and came away to find you."

By degrees he was inclined to believe that she had faintly attempted,
at least, what she said she had done; and his horror at her impulse
was mixed with amazement at the strength of her affection for
himself, and at the strangeness of its quality, which had apparently
extinguished her moral sense altogether. Unable to realize the
gravity of her conduct, she seemed at last content; and he looked
at her as she lay upon his shoulder, weeping with happiness, and
wondered what obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to
this aberration--if it were an aberration. There momentarily flashed
through his mind that the family tradition of the coach and murder
might have arisen because the d'Urbervilles had been known to do
these things. As well as his confused and excited ideas could
reason, he supposed that in the moment of mad grief of which she
spoke, her mind had lost its balance, and plunged her into this
abyss.

It was very terrible if true; if a temporary hallucination, sad. But,
anyhow, here was this deserted wife of his, this passionately-fond
woman, clinging to him without a suspicion that he would be anything
to her but a protector. He saw that for him to be otherwise was
not, in her mind, within the region of the possible. Tenderness was
absolutely dominant in Clare at last. He kissed her endlessly with
his white lips, and held her hand, and said--

"I will not desert you! I will protect you by every means in my
power, dearest love, whatever you may have done or not have done!"

They then walked on under the trees, Tess turning her head every now
and then to look at him. Worn and unhandsome as he had become, it
was plain that she did not discern the least fault in his appearance.
To her he was, as of old, all that was perfection, personally and
mentally. He was still her Antinous, her Apollo even; his sickly
face was beautiful as the morning to her affectionate regard on
this day no less than when she first beheld him; for was it not the
face of the one man on earth who had loved her purely, and who had
believed in her as pure!

With an instinct as to possibilities, he did not now, as he had
intended, make for the first station beyond the town, but plunged
still farther under the firs, which here abounded for miles. Each
claspi