leams from a broken
mirror. The discovery was no less a scourge than a surprise.

He came on looking upon the ground, and did not see Bathsheba till
they were less than a stone's throw apart. He looked up at the sound
of her pit-pat, and his changed appearance sufficiently denoted to
her the depth and strength of the feelings paralyzed by her letter.

"Oh; is it you, Mr. Boldwood?" she faltered, a guilty warmth pulsing
in her face.

Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a
means more effective than words. There are accents in the eye which
are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can
enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter
moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. Boldwood's look was
unanswerable.

Seeing she turned a little aside, he said, "What, are you afraid of
me?"

"Why should you say that?" said Bathsheba.

"I fancied you looked so," said he. "And it is most strange, because
of its contrast with my feeling for you."

She regained self-possession, fixed her eyes calmly, and waited.

"You know what that feeling is," continued Boldwood, deliberately.
"A thing strong as death. No dismissal by a hasty letter affects
that."

"I wish you did not feel so strongly about me," she murmured. "It is
generous of you, and more than I deserve, but I must not hear it
now."

"Hear it? What do you think I have to say, then? I am not to marry
you, and that's enough. Your letter was excellently plain. I want
you to hear nothing--not I."

Bathsheba was unable to direct her will into any definite groove for
freeing herself from this fearfully awkward position. She confusedly
said, "Good evening," and was moving on. Boldwood walked up to her
heavily and dully.

"Bathsheba--darling--is it final indeed?"

"Indeed it is."

"Oh, Bathsheba--have pity upon me!" Boldwood burst out. "God's sake,
yes--I am come to that low, lowest stage--to ask a woman for pity!
Still, she is you--she is you."

Bathsheba commanded herself well. But she could hardly get a clear
voice for what came instinctively to her lips: "There is little
honour to the woman in that speech." It was only whispered, for
something unutterably mournful no less than distressing in this
spectacle of a man showing himself to be so entirely the vane of a
passion enervated the feminine instinct for punctilios.

"I am beyond myself about this, and am mad," he said. "I am no s