.

The human interest of the new intention--and a human interest is
indispensable to the most spiritual and self-sacrificing--was created
by a letter from Sue, bearing a fresh postmark. She evidently
wrote with anxiety, and told very little about her own doings, more
than that she had passed some sort of examination for a Queen's
Scholarship, and was going to enter a training college at Melchester
to complete herself for the vocation she had chosen, partly by his
influence. There was a theological college at Melchester; Melchester
was a quiet and soothing place, almost entirely ecclesiastical in its
tone; a spot where worldly learning and intellectual smartness had no
establishment; where the altruistic feeling that he did possess would
perhaps be more highly estimated than a brilliancy which he did not.

As it would be necessary that he should continue for a time to work
at his trade while reading up Divinity, which he had neglected at
Christminster for the ordinary classical grind, what better course
for him than to get employment at the further city, and pursue this
plan of reading? That his excessive human interest in the new place
was entirely of Sue's making, while at the same time Sue was to be
regarded even less than formerly as proper to create it, had an
ethical contradictoriness to which he was not blind. But that much
he conceded to human frailty, and hoped to learn to love her only as
a friend and kinswoman.

He considered that he might so mark out his coming years as to begin
his ministry at the age of thirty--an age which much attracted him as
being that of his exemplar when he first began to teach in Galilee.
This would allow him plenty of time for deliberate study, and for
acquiring capital by his trade to help his aftercourse of keeping the
necessary terms at a theological college.

Christmas had come and passed, and Sue had gone to the Melchester
Normal School. The time was just the worst in the year for Jude to
get into new employment, and he had written suggesting to her that
he should postpone his arrival for a month or so, till the days had
lengthened. She had acquiesced so readily that he wished he had not
proposed it--she evidently did not much care about him, though she
had never once reproached him for his strange conduct in coming to
her that night, and his silent disappearance. Neither had she ever
said a word about her relations with Mr. Phillotson.

Suddenly, however, quit