ears--as I am than
he?"

"It depends upon what they feel for each other."

He gave her no opportunity of self-satisfaction, and she had to go on
unaided, which she did in a vanquished tone, verging on tears:

"I--I think I must be equally honest with you as you have been with
me. Perhaps you have seen what it is I want to say?--that though I
like Mr. Phillotson as a friend, I don't like him--it is a torture to
me to--live with him as a husband!--There, now I have let it out--I
couldn't help it, although I have been--pretending I am happy.--Now
you'll have a contempt for me for ever, I suppose!" She bent down
her face upon her hands as they lay upon the cloth, and silently
sobbed in little jerks that made the fragile three-legged table
quiver.

"I have only been married a month or two!" she went on, still
remaining bent upon the table, and sobbing into her hands. "And it
is said that what a woman shrinks from--in the early days of her
marriage--she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a
dozen years. But that is much like saying that the amputation of a
limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to
the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time!"

Jude could hardly speak, but he said, "I thought there was something
wrong, Sue! Oh, I thought there was!"

"But it is not as you think!--there is nothing wrong except my own
wickedness, I suppose you'd call it--a repugnance on my part, for a
reason I cannot disclose, and what would not be admitted as one by
the world in general! ... What tortures me so much is the necessity
of being responsive to this man whenever he wishes, good as he is
morally!--the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a
matter whose essence is its voluntariness! ... I wish he would beat
me, or be faithless to me, or do some open thing that I could talk
about as a justification for feeling as I do! But he does nothing,
except that he has grown a little cold since he has found out how I
feel. That's why he didn't come to the funeral... Oh, I am very
miserable--I don't know what to do! ... Don't come near me, Jude,
because you mustn't. Don't--don't!"

But he had jumped up and put his face against hers--or rather against
her ear, her face being inaccessible.

"I told you not to, Jude!"

"I know you did--I only wish to--console you! It all arose through
my being married before we met, didn't it? You would have been my
wife, Sue,