nd therefore
you did so well--Oh so well!--in recognizing it--and taking her to
you again."

"God above--and is that all I've come to hear? If there is anything
more degrading, immoral, unnatural, than another in my life, it is
this meretricious contract with Arabella which has been called doing
the right thing! And you too--you call yourself Phillotson's wife!
HIS wife! You are mine."

"Don't make me rush away from you--I can't bear much! But on this
point I am decided."

"I cannot understand how you did it--how you think it--I cannot!"

"Never mind that. He is a kind husband to me--And I--I've wrestled
and struggled, and fasted, and prayed. I have nearly brought my body
into complete subjection. And you mustn't--will you--wake--"

"Oh you darling little fool; where is your reason? You seem to have
suffered the loss of your faculties! I would argue with you if I
didn't know that a woman in your state of feeling is quite beyond all
appeals to her brains. Or is it that you are humbugging yourself, as
so many women do about these things; and don't actually believe what
you pretend to, and only are indulging in the luxury of the emotion
raised by an affected belief?"

"Luxury! How can you be so cruel!"

"You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human
intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your
scorn of convention gone? I WOULD have died game!"

"You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!" She turned
off quickly.

"I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the
strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are
not worth a man's love!"

Her bosom began to go up and down. "I can't endure you to say that!"
she burst out, and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back
impulsively. "Don't, don't scorn me! Kiss me, oh kiss me lots
of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug--I
can't bear it!" She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his,
continued: "I must tell you--oh I must--my darling Love! It has
been--only a church marriage--an apparent marriage I mean! He
suggested it at the very first!"

"How?"

"I mean it is a nominal marriage only. It hasn't been more than that
at all since I came back to him!"

"Sue!" he said. Pressing her to him in his arms he bruised her
lips with kisses: "If misery can know happiness, I have a moment's
happiness now! Now, in the name of all you hold