girl who brought
the pagan deities into this most Christian city?--who mimicked Miss
Fontover when she crushed them with her heel?--quoted Gibbon, and
Shelley, and Mill? Where are dear Apollo, and dear Venus now!"

"Oh don't, don't be so cruel to me, Jude, and I so unhappy!" she
sobbed. "I can't bear it! I was in error--I cannot reason with you.
I was wrong--proud in my own conceit! Arabella's coming was the
finish. Don't satirize me: it cuts like a knife!"

He flung his arms round her and kissed her passionately there in the
silent street, before she could hinder him. They went on till they
came to a little coffee-house. "Jude," she said with suppressed
tears, "would you mind getting a lodging here?"

"I will--if, if you really wish? But do you? Let me go to our door
and understand you."

He went and conducted her in. She said she wanted no supper, and
went in the dark upstairs and struck a light. Turning she found that
Jude had followed her, and was standing at the chamber door. She
went to him, put her hand in his, and said "Good-night."

"But Sue! Don't we live here?"

"You said you would do as I wished!"

"Yes. Very well! ... Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue
distastefully as I have done! Perhaps as we couldn't conscientiously
marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted.
Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as
ours! Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"

"I am so glad you see that much, at any rate. I never deliberately
meant to do as I did. I slipped into my false position through
jealousy and agitation!"

"But surely through love--you loved me?"

"Yes. But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere
lovers; until--"

"But people in love couldn't live for ever like that!"

"Women could: men can't, because they--won't. An average woman is
in this superior to an average man--that she never instigates, only
responds. We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more."

"I was the unhappy cause of the change, as I have said
before! ... Well, as you will! ... But human nature can't help
being itself."

"Oh yes--that's just what it has to learn--self-mastery."

"I repeat--if either were to blame it was not you but I."

"No--it was I. Your wickedness was only the natural man's desire
to possess the woman. Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy
stimulated me to oust Arabella. I had thought I ou