"What made either of the others throw it, I wonder?" Jude asked,

politely accepting her assertion, though he had very large doubts as

to its truth.

"Impudence. Don't tell folk it was I, mind!"

"How can I? I don't know your name."

"Ah, no. Shall I tell it to you?"

"Do!"

"Arabella Donn. I'm living here."

"I must have known it if I had often come this way. But I mostly go

straight along the high-road."

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"My father is a pig-breeder, and these girls are helping me wash the

innerds for black-puddings and such like."

They talked a little more and a little more, as they stood regarding

each other and leaning against the hand-rail of the bridge. The

unvoiced call of woman to man, which was uttered very distinctly

by Arabella's personality, held Jude to the spot against his

intention--almost against his will, and in a way new to his

experience. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that till this

moment Jude had never looked at a woman to consider her as such, but

had vaguely regarded the sex as beings outside his life and purposes.

He gazed from her eyes to her mouth, thence to her bosom, and to her

full round naked arms, wet, mottled with the chill of the water, and

firm as marble.

"What a nice-looking girl you are!" he murmured, though the words had

not been necessary to express his sense of her magnetism.

"Ah, you should see me Sundays!" she said piquantly.

"I don't suppose I could?" he answered "That's for you to think on. There's nobody after me just now,

though there med be in a week or two." She had spoken this without

a smile, and the dimples disappeared.

Jude felt himself drifting strangely, but could not help it. "Will

you let me?"

"I don't mind."

By this time she had managed to get back one dimple by turning

her face aside for a moment and repeating the odd little sucking

operation before mentioned, Jude being still unconscious of more than

a general impression of her appearance. "Next Sunday?" he hazarded.

"To-morrow, that is?"

"Yes."

"Shall I call?"

"Yes."

She brightened with a little glow of triumph, swept him almost

tenderly with her eyes in turning, and retracing her steps down the

brookside grass rejoined her companions.

Jude Fawley shouldered his tool-basket and resumed his lonely way,

filled with an ardour at which he mentally stood at gaze. He had

just inhaled a single breath from a new atmosphere, which had

evidently been hanging round him everywhere he went, for he knew not

how long, but had somehow been divided from his actual breathing as

by a sheet of glass. The intentions as to reading, working, and

learning, which he had so precisely formulated only a few minutes

earlier, were suffering a curious collapse into a corner, he knew not

how.




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