packing up her few possessions and placing on
the table the small sum she owed, she went out privately, secured a last
available seat in the London coach, and, almost before she had fully
weighed her action, she was rolling out of the town in the dusk of the
September evening.

'Having taken this startling step she began to reflect upon her reasons.
He had been one of that tragic Committee the sound of whose name was a
horror to the civilized world; yet he had been only one of several
members, and, it seemed, not the most active. He had marked down names
on principle, had felt no personal enmity against his victims, and had
enriched himself not a sou out of the office he had held. Nothing could
change the past. Meanwhile he loved her, and her heart inclined to as
much of him as she could detach from that past. Why not, as he had
suggested, bury memories, and inaugurate a new era by this union? In
other words, why not indulge her tenderness, since its nullification
could do no good.

'Thus she held self-communion in her seat in the coach, passing through
Casterbridge, and Shottsford, and on to the White Hart at Melchester, at
which place the whole fabric of her recent intentions crumbled down.
Better be staunch having got so far; let things take their course, and
marry boldly the man who had so impressed her. How great he was; how
small was she! And she had presumed to judge him! Abandoning her place
in the coach with the precipitancy that had characterized her taking it,
she waited till the vehicle had driven off, something in the departing
shapes of the outside passengers against the starlit sky giving her a
start, as she afterwards remembered. Presently the down coach, "The
Morning Herald," entered the city, and she hastily obtained a place on
the top.

'"I'll be firm--I'll be his--if it cost me my immortal soul!" she said.
And with troubled breathings she journeyed back over the road she had
just traced.

'She reached our royal watering-place by the time the day broke, and her
first aim was to get back to the hired room in which her last few days
had been spent. When the landlady appeared at the door in response to
Mademoiselle V--'s nervous summons, she explained her sudden departure
and return as best she could; and no objection being offered to her re-
engagement of the room for one day longer she ascended to the chamber and
sat down panting. She was back once more, and her wild tergiversations
we