They looked at each other, panting; till he rose and said: "One kiss,

now I can do it without damage to property; and I'll go!"

But she had jumped up too. "You must find me first!" she cried.

Her lover followed her as she withdrew. It was now dark inside the

room, and the window being small he could not discover for a long

time what had become of her, till a laugh revealed her to have rushed

up the stairs, whither Jude rushed at her heels.

IX

It was some two months later in the year, and the pair had met

constantly during the interval. Arabella seemed dissatisfied; she

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was always imagining, and waiting, and wondering.

One day she met the itinerant Vilbert. She, like all the cottagers

thereabout, knew the quack well, and she began telling him of her

experiences. Arabella had been gloomy, but before he left her she

had grown brighter. That evening she kept an appointment with Jude,

who seemed sad.

"I am going away," he said to her. "I think I ought to go. I think

it will be better both for you and for me. I wish some things had

never begun! I was much to blame, I know. But it is never too late

to mend."

Arabella began to cry. "How do you know it is not too late?" she

said. "That's all very well to say! I haven't told you yet!" and

she looked into his face with streaming eyes.

"What?" he asked, turning pale. "Not...?"

"Yes! And what shall I do if you desert me?"

"Oh, Arabella--how can you say that, my dear! You KNOW I wouldn't

desert you!"

"Well then--"

"I have next to no wages as yet, you know; or perhaps I should have

thought of this before... But, of course if that's the case, we must

marry! What other thing do you think I could dream of doing?"

"I thought--I thought, deary, perhaps you would go away all the more

for that, and leave me to face it alone!"

"You knew better! Of course I never dreamt six months ago, or even

three, of marrying. It is a complete smashing up of my plans--I mean

my plans before I knew you, my dear. But what are they, after all!

Dreams about books, and degrees, and impossible fellowships, and all

that. Certainly we'll marry: we must!"

That night he went out alone, and walked in the dark self-communing.

He knew well, too well, in the secret centre of his brain, that

Arabella was not worth a great deal as a specimen of womankind.

Yet, such being the custom of the rural districts among honourable

young men who had drifted so far into intimacy with a woman as he

unfortunately had done, he was ready to abide by what he had said,

and take the consequences. For his own soothing he kept up a

factitious belief in her. His idea of her was the thing of most

consequence, not Arabella herself, he sometimes said laconically.




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