t to be allowed to undo
what one had done so ignorantly! I daresay it happens to lots of
women, only they submit, and I kick... When people of a later age
look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times
that we have the unhappiness to live in, what WILL they say!"

"You are very bitter, darling Sue! How I wish--I wish--"

"You must go in now!"

In a moment of impulse she bent over the sill, and laid her face upon
his hair, weeping, and then imprinting a scarcely perceptible little
kiss upon the top of his head, withdrawing quickly, so that he could
not put his arms round her, as otherwise he unquestionably would have
done. She shut the casement, and he returned to his cottage.

III

Sue's distressful confession recurred to Jude's mind all the night as
being a sorrow indeed.

The morning after, when it was time for her to go, the neighbours saw
her companion and herself disappearing on foot down the hill path
which led into the lonely road to Alfredston. An hour passed before
he returned along the same route, and in his face there was a look of
exaltation not unmixed with recklessness. An incident had occurred.

They had stood parting in the silent highway, and their tense and
passionate moods had led to bewildered inquiries of each other on how
far their intimacy ought to go; till they had almost quarrelled, and
she said tearfully that it was hardly proper of him as a parson in
embryo to think of such a thing as kissing her even in farewell as he
now wished to do. Then she had conceded that the fact of the kiss
would be nothing: all would depend upon the spirit of it. If given
in the spirit of a cousin and a friend she saw no objection: if in
the spirit of a lover she could not permit it. "Will you swear that
it will not be in that spirit?" she had said.

No: he would not. And then they had turned from each other in
estrangement, and gone their several ways, till at a distance
of twenty or thirty yards both had looked round simultaneously.
That look behind was fatal to the reserve hitherto more or less
maintained. They had quickly run back, and met, and embracing most
unpremeditatedly, kissed close and long. When they parted for good
it was with flushed cheeks on her side, and a beating heart on his.

The kiss was a turning-point in Jude's career. Back again in the
cottage, and left to reflection, he saw one thing: that though
his kiss of that aerial being had seemed the