ion. Don't discuss
it further, dear Jude!"

"Of course, if it would make you reproach yourself... but you do
like me very much, Sue? Say you do! Say that you do a quarter, a
tenth, as much as I do you, and I'll be content!"

"I've let you kiss me, and that tells enough."

"Just once or so!"

"Well--don't be a greedy boy."

He leant back, and did not look at her for a long time. That
episode in her past history of which she had told him--of the poor
Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to Jude's
mind; and he saw himself as a possible second in such a torturing
destiny.

"This is a queer elopement!" he murmured. "Perhaps you are making
a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it
almost seems so--to see you sitting up there so prim!"

"Now you mustn't be angry--I won't let you!" she coaxed, turning and
moving nearer to him. "You did kiss me just now, you know; and I
didn't dislike you to, I own it, Jude. Only I don't want to let you
do it again, just yet--considering how we are circumstanced, don't
you see!"

He could never resist her when she pleaded (as she well knew). And
they sat side by side with joined hands, till she aroused herself at
some thought.

"I can't possibly go to that Temperance Inn, after your telegraphing
that message!"

"Why not?"

"You can see well enough!"

"Very well; there'll be some other one open, no doubt. I have
sometimes thought, since your marrying Phillotson because of a stupid
scandal, that under the affectation of independent views you are as
enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!"

"Not mentally. But I haven't the courage of my views, as I said
before. I didn't marry him altogether because of the scandal.
But sometimes a woman's LOVE OF BEING LOVED gets the better of her
conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a
man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love
him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in,
and she does what she can to repair the wrong."

"You simply mean that you flirted outrageously with him, poor old
chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, married him, though
you tortured yourself to death by doing it."

"Well--if you will put it brutally!--it was a little like that--that
and the scandal together--and your concealing from me what you ought
to have told me before!"

He could see that she was distressed and tear