"Sue, you seem when you are like this to be one of the women of some
grand old civilization, whom I used to read about in my bygone,
wasted, classical days, rather than a denizen of a mere Christian
country. I almost expect you to say at these times that you have
just been talking to some friend whom you met in the Via Sacra,
about the latest news of Octavia or Livia; or have been listening to
Aspasia's eloquence, or have been watching Praxiteles chiselling away
at his latest Venus, while Phryne made complaint that she was tired
of posing."
They had now reached the house of the parish clerk. Sue stood back,
while her lover went up to the door. His hand was raised to knock
when she said: "Jude!"
He looked round.
"Wait a minute, would you mind?"
He came back to her.
"Just let us think," she said timidly. "I had such a horrid dream
one night! ... And Arabella--"
"What did Arabella say to you?" he asked.
"Oh, she said that when people were tied up you could get
the law of a man better if he beat you--and how when couples
quarrelled... Jude, do you think that when you must have me with
you by law, we shall be so happy as we are now? The men and women
of our family are very generous when everything depends upon their
goodwill, but they always kick against compulsion. Don't you
dread the attitude that insensibly arises out of legal obligation?
Don't you think it is destructive to a passion whose essence is its
gratuitousness?"
"Upon my word, love, you are beginning to frighten me, too, with all
this foreboding! Well, let's go back and think it over."
Her face brightened. "Yes--so we will!" said she. And they turned
from the clerk's door, Sue taking his arm and murmuring as they
walked on homeward:
Can you keep the bee from ranging,
Or the ring-dove's neck from changing?
No! Nor fetter'd love ...
They thought it over, or postponed thinking. Certainly they
postponed action, and seemed to live on in a dreamy paradise.
At the end of a fortnight or three weeks matters remained unadvanced,
and no banns were announced to the ears of any Aldbrickham
congregation.
Whilst they were postponing and postponing thus a letter and a
newspaper arrived before breakfast one morning from Arabella.
Seeing the handwriting Jude went up to Sue's room and told her,
and as soon as she was dressed she hastened down. Sue opened the
newspaper; Jude the letter. After glancing at the paper she held
across the first page to him with her finger on a paragraph; but he
was so absorbed in his letter that he did not turn awhile.