uch a course as Jude purposed. This
conviction was so real with him that one day when, as was frequent,
he was at work in a neighbouring village church alone, he felt it to
be his duty to pray against his weakness. But much as he wished to
be an exemplar in these things he could not get on. It was quite
impossible, he found, to ask to be delivered from temptation when
your heart's desire was to be tempted unto seventy times seven. So
he excused himself. "After all," he said, "it is not altogether
an _erotolepsy_ that is the matter with me, as at that first time.
I can see that she is exceptionally bright; and it is partly a wish
for intellectual sympathy, and a craving for loving-kindness in my
solitude." Thus he went on adoring her, fearing to realize that
it was human perversity. For whatever Sue's virtues, talents, or
ecclesiastical saturation, it was certain that those items were not
at all the cause of his affection for her.

On an afternoon at this time a young girl entered the stone-mason's
yard with some hesitation, and, lifting her skirts to avoid draggling
them in the white dust, crossed towards the office.

"That's a nice girl," said one of the men known as Uncle Joe.

"Who is she?" asked another.

"I don't know--I've seen her about here and there. Why, yes, she's
the daughter of that clever chap Bridehead who did all the wrought
ironwork at St. Silas' ten years ago, and went away to London
afterwards. I don't know what he's doing now--not much I fancy--as
she's come back here."

Meanwhile the young woman had knocked at the office door and asked if
Mr. Jude Fawley was at work in the yard. It so happened that Jude
had gone out somewhere or other that afternoon, which information she
received with a look of disappointment, and went away immediately.
When Jude returned they told him, and described her, whereupon he
exclaimed, "Why--that's my cousin Sue!"

He looked along the street after her, but she was out of sight. He
had no longer any thought of a conscientious avoidance of her, and
resolved to call upon her that very evening. And when he reached
his lodging he found a note from her--a first note--one of those
documents which, simple and commonplace in themselves, are seen
retrospectively to have been pregnant with impassioned consequences.
The very unconsciousness of a looming drama which is shown in such
innocent first epistles from women to men, or _vice versa_, makes
them, when such a