h to, always."

"What do I care about J. S. Mill!" moaned he. "I only want to lead
a quiet life! Do you mind my saying that I have guessed what never
once occurred to me before our marriage--that you were in love, and
are in love, with Jude Fawley!"

"You may go on guessing that I am, since you have begun. But do you
suppose that if I had been I should have asked you to let me go and
live with him?"

The ringing of the school bell saved Phillotson from the necessity of
replying at present to what apparently did not strike him as being
such a convincing _argumentum ad verecundiam_ as she, in her loss of
courage at the last moment, meant it to appear. She was beginning to
be so puzzling and unstateable that he was ready to throw in with her
other little peculiarities the extremest request which a wife could
make.

They proceeded to the schools that morning as usual, Sue entering
the class-room, where he could see the back of her head through the
glass partition whenever he turned his eyes that way. As he went on
giving and hearing lessons his forehead and eyebrows twitched from
concentrated agitation of thought, till at length he tore a scrap
from a sheet of scribbling paper and wrote:

Your request prevents my attending to work at all. I don't
know what I am doing! Was it seriously made?

He folded the piece of paper very small, and gave it to a little
boy to take to Sue. The child toddled off into the class-room.
Phillotson saw his wife turn and take the note, and the bend of her
pretty head as she read it, her lips slightly crisped, to prevent
undue expression under fire of so many young eyes. He could not see
her hands, but she changed her position, and soon the child returned,
bringing nothing in reply. In a few minutes, however, one of Sue's
class appeared, with a little note similar to his own. These words
only were pencilled therein:

I am sincerely sorry to say that it was seriously made.

Phillotson looked more disturbed than before, and the meeting-place
of his brows twitched again. In ten minutes he called up the child
he had just sent to her, and dispatched another missive:

God knows I don't want to thwart you in any reasonable way.
My whole thought is to make you comfortable and happy. But
I cannot agree to such a preposterous notion as your going
to live with your lover. You would lose everybody's respect
and regard; and so should I!

After an