They walked on vaguely, till she paused, and her little voice began

anew: "It seems so weak, too, to vacillate like this! And yet how

much better than to act rashly a second time... How terrible that

scene was to me! The expression in that flabby woman's face, leading

her on to give herself to that gaol-bird, not for a few hours, as she

would, but for a lifetime, as she must. And the other poor soul--to

escape a nominal shame which was owing to the weakness of her

character, degrading herself to the real shame of bondage to a tyrant

who scorned her--a man whom to avoid for ever was her only chance of

salvation... This is our parish church, isn't it? This is where

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it would have to be, if we did it in the usual way? A service or

something seems to be going on."

Jude went up and looked in at the door. "Why--it is a wedding here

too," he said. "Everybody seems to be on our tack to-day."

Sue said she supposed it was because Lent was just over, when there

was always a crowd of marriages. "Let us listen," she said, "and

find how it feels to us when performed in a church."

They stepped in, and entered a back seat, and watched the proceedings

at the altar. The contracting couple appeared to belong to the

well-to-do middle class, and the wedding altogether was of ordinary

prettiness and interest. They could see the flowers tremble in the

bride's hand, even at that distance, and could hear her mechanical

murmur of words whose meaning her brain seemed to gather not at all

under the pressure of her self-consciousness. Sue and Jude listened,

and severally saw themselves in time past going through the same form

of self-committal.

"It is not the same to her, poor thing, as it would be to me doing it

over again with my present knowledge," Sue whispered. "You see, they

are fresh to it, and take the proceedings as a matter of course.

But having been awakened to its awful solemnity as we have, or at

least as I have, by experience, and to my own too squeamish feelings

perhaps sometimes, it really does seem immoral in me to go and

undertake the same thing again with open eyes. Coming in here and

seeing this has frightened me from a church wedding as much as the

other did from a registry one... We are a weak, tremulous pair,

Jude, and what others may feel confident in I feel doubts of--my

being proof against the sordid conditions of a business contract

again!"




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