a ladder executing
a job of this sort inside one of the churches. There was a short
morning service, and when the parson entered Jude came down from his
ladder, and sat with the half-dozen people forming the congregation,
till the prayer should be ended, and he could resume his tapping. He
did not observe till the service was half over that one of the women
was Sue, who had perforce accompanied the elderly Miss Fontover
thither.

Jude sat watching her pretty shoulders, her easy, curiously
nonchalant risings and sittings, and her perfunctory genuflexions,
and thought what a help such an Anglican would have been to him in
happier circumstances. It was not so much his anxiety to get on with
his work that made him go up to it immediately the worshipers began
to take their leave: it was that he dared not, in this holy spot,
confront the woman who was beginning to influence him in such an
indescribable manner. Those three enormous reasons why he must
not attempt intimate acquaintance with Sue Bridehead, now that his
interest in her had shown itself to be unmistakably of a sexual kind,
loomed as stubbornly as ever. But it was also obvious that man could
not live by work alone; that the particular man Jude, at any rate,
wanted something to love. Some men would have rushed incontinently
to her, snatched the pleasure of easy friendship which she could
hardly refuse, and have left the rest to chance. Not so Jude--at
first.

But as the days, and still more particularly the lonely evenings,
dragged along, he found himself, to his moral consternation,
to be thinking more of her instead of thinking less of her, and
experiencing a fearful bliss in doing what was erratic, informal, and
unexpected. Surrounded by her influence all day, walking past the
spots she frequented, he was always thinking of her, and was obliged
to own to himself that his conscience was likely to be the loser in
this battle.

To be sure she was almost an ideality to him still. Perhaps to know
her would be to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized
passion. A voice whispered that, though he desired to know her, he
did not desire to be cured.

There was not the least doubt that from his own orthodox point of
view the situation was growing immoral. For Sue to be the loved one
of a man who was licensed by the laws of his country to love Arabella
and none other unto his life's end, was a pretty bad second beginning
when the man was bent on s