isibly left the room.

"She said she was not your wife?" resumed Arabella in another voice.
"Why should she do that?"

"I cannot inform you," said Jude shortly.

"She is, isn't she? She once told me so."

"I don't criticize what she says."

"Ah--I see! Well, my time is up. I am staying here to-night, and
thought I could do no less than call, after our mutual affliction.
I am sleeping at the place where I used to be barmaid, and to-morrow
I go back to Alfredston. Father is come home again, and I am living
with him."

"He has returned from Australia?" said Jude with languid curiosity.

"Yes. Couldn't get on there. Had a rough time of it. Mother died
of dys--what do you call it--in the hot weather, and Father and two
of the young ones have just got back. He has got a cottage near the
old place, and for the present I am keeping house for him."

Jude's former wife had maintained a stereotyped manner of strict good
breeding even now that Sue was gone, and limited her stay to a number
of minutes that should accord with the highest respectability. When
she had departed Jude, much relieved, went to the stairs and called
Sue--feeling anxious as to what had become of her.

There was no answer, and the carpenter who kept the lodgings said she
had not come in. Jude was puzzled, and became quite alarmed at her
absence, for the hour was growing late. The carpenter called his
wife, who conjectured that Sue might have gone to St. Silas' church,
as she often went there.

"Surely not at this time o' night?" said Jude. "It is shut."

"She knows somebody who keeps the key, and she has it whenever she
wants it."

"How long has she been going on with this?"

"Oh, some few weeks, I think."

Jude went vaguely in the direction of the church, which he had never
once approached since he lived out that way years before, when his
young opinions were more mystical than they were now. The spot was
deserted, but the door was certainly unfastened; he lifted the latch
without noise, and pushing to the door behind him, stood absolutely
still inside. The prevalent silence seemed to contain a faint sound,
explicable as a breathing, or a sobbing, which came from the other
end of the building. The floor-cloth deadened his footsteps as he
moved in that direction through the obscurity, which was broken only
by the faintest reflected night-light from without.

High overhead, above the chancel steps, Jude could discern a huge,
s