They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark. Some of the

dairy-people, who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening

after their engagement, heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to

fragments, though they were too far off to hear the words discoursed;

noted the spasmodic catch in her remarks, broken into syllables by

the leapings of her heart, as she walked leaning on his arm; her

contented pauses, the occasional little laugh upon which her soul

seemed to ride--the laugh of a woman in company with the man she

loves and has won from all other women--unlike anything else in

nature. They marked the buoyancy of her tread, like the skim of a

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bird which has not quite alighted.

Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being;

it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness

of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would

persist in their attempts to touch her--doubt, fear, moodiness, care,

shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the

circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them

in hungry subjection there. A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual

remembrance. She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the

background those shapes of darkness were always spread. They might

be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little

every day. One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors keeping house,

all the other occupants of the domicile being away. As they talked

she looked thoughtfully up at him, and met his two appreciative eyes.

"I am not worthy of you--no, I am not!" she burst out, jumping up

from her low stool as though appalled at his homage, and the fulness

of her own joy thereat. Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be that which was

only the smaller part of it, said-"I won't have you speak like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not

consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but

in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and

pure, and lovely, and of good report--as you are, my Tess."

She struggled with the sob in her throat. How often had that string

of excellences made her young heart ache in church of late years, and

how strange that he should have cited them now.

"Why didn't you stay and love me when I--was sixteen; living with my

little sisters and brothers, and you danced on the green? O, why

didn't you, why didn't you!" she said, impetuously clasping her

hands. Angel began to comfort and reassure her, thinking to himself, truly

enough, what a creature of moods she was, and how careful he would

have to be of her when she depended for her happiness entirely on

him. "Ah--why didn't I stay!" he said. "That is just what I feel. If I

had only known! But you must not be so bitter in your regret--why

should you be?" With the woman's instinct to hide she diverged hastily-




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