o--only once now--please,
Jude!"

"That's rather cruel," he answered; but acquiesced. "Such a strange
thing has happened to me," Jude continued after a silence. "Arabella
has actually written to ask me to get a divorce from her--in kindness
to her, she says. She wants to honestly and legally marry that man
she has already married virtually; and begs me to enable her to do
it."

"What have you done?"

"I have agreed. I thought at first I couldn't do it without getting
her into trouble about that second marriage, and I don't want to
injure her in any way. Perhaps she's no worse than I am, after all!
But nobody knows about it over here, and I find it will not be a
difficult proceeding at all. If she wants to start afresh I have
only too obvious reasons for not hindering her."

"Then you'll be free?"

"Yes, I shall be free."

"Where are we booked for?" she asked, with the discontinuity that
marked her to-night.

"Aldbrickham, as I said."

"But it will be very late when we get there?"

"Yes. I thought of that, and I wired for a room for us at the
Temperance Hotel there."

"One?"

"Yes--one."

She looked at him. "Oh Jude!" Sue bent her forehead against the
corner of the compartment. "I thought you might do it; and that I
was deceiving you. But I didn't mean that!"

In the pause which followed, Jude's eyes fixed themselves with
a stultified expression on the opposite seat. "Well!" he
said... "Well!"

He remained in silence; and seeing how discomfited he was she put her
face against his cheek, murmuring, "Don't be vexed, dear!"

"Oh--there's no harm done," he said. "But--I understood it like
that... Is this a sudden change of mind?"

"You have no right to ask me such a question; and I shan't answer!"
she said, smiling.

"My dear one, your happiness is more to me than anything--although we
seem to verge on quarrelling so often!--and your will is law to me.
I am something more than a mere--selfish fellow, I hope. Have it as
you wish!" On reflection his brow showed perplexity. "But perhaps
it is that you don't love me--not that you have become conventional!
Much as, under your teaching, I hate convention, I hope it IS that,
not the other terrible alternative!"

Even at this obvious moment for candour Sue could not be quite candid
as to the state of that mystery, her heart. "Put it down to my
timidity," she said with hurried evasiveness; "to a woman's natural
timidity when the crisis c