nd with a rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have
submitted to an indignant chastisement for her levity had Gabriel
protested that he was loving her at the same time; the impetuosity
of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and
anathematizes--there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a
tenderness in the strife. This was what she had been expecting,
and what she had not got. To be lectured because the lecturer saw
her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was
exasperating. He had not finished, either. He continued in a more
agitated voice:--

"My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for
playing pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime.
Leading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy action.
And even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you
might have let him find it out in some way of true loving-kindness,
and not by sending him a valentine's letter."

Bathsheba laid down the shears.

"I cannot allow any man to--to criticise my private conduct!" she
exclaimed. "Nor will I for a minute. So you'll please leave the
farm at the end of the week!"

It may have been a peculiarity--at any rate it was a fact--that when
Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip
trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or heavenward one.
Her nether lip quivered now.

"Very well, so I will," said Gabriel calmly. He had been held to
her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking,
rather than by a chain he could not break. "I should be even better
pleased to go at once," he added.

"Go at once then, in Heaven's name!" said she, her eyes flashing at
his, though never meeting them. "Don't let me see your face any
more."

"Very well, Miss Everdene--so it shall be."

And he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as
Moses left the presence of Pharaoh.

CHAPTER XXI

TROUBLES IN THE FOLD--A MESSAGE

Gabriel Oak had ceased to feed the Weatherbury flock for about
four-and-twenty hours, when on Sunday afternoon the elderly gentlemen
Joseph Poorgrass, Matthew Moon, Fray, and half-a-dozen others, came
running up to the house of the mistress of the Upper Farm.

"Whatever IS the matter, men?" she said, meeting them at the door
just as she was coming out on her way to church, and ceasing in a
moment from the close compression of her two red lips, wit