Later on that night Clare also retraced his steps to the house.

Entering softly to the sitting-room he obtained a light, and with the

manner of one who had considered his course he spread his rugs upon

the old horse-hair sofa which stood there, and roughly shaped it to

a sleeping-couch. Before lying down he crept shoeless upstairs, and

listened at the door of her apartment. Her measured breathing told

that she was sleeping profoundly.

"Thank God!" murmured Clare; and yet he was conscious of a pang of

bitterness at the thought--approximately true, though not wholly

so--that having shifted the burden of her life to his shoulders, she

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was now reposing without care. He turned away to descend; then, irresolute, faced round to her

door again. In the act he caught sight of one of the d'Urberville

dames, whose portrait was immediately over the entrance to Tess's

bedchamber. In the candlelight the painting was more than

unpleasant. Sinister design lurked in the woman's features, a

concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex--so it seemed to

him then. The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low--precisely as

Tess's had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again

he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between

them. The check was sufficient.

He resumed his retreat and descended. His air remained calm and cold, his small compressed mouth indexing

his powers of self-control; his face wearing still that terrible

sterile expression which had spread thereon since her disclosure.

It was the face of a man who was no longer passion's slave, yet who

found no advantage in his enfranchisement. He was simply regarding

the harrowing contingencies of human experience, the unexpectedness

of things. Nothing so pure, so sweet, so virginal as Tess had seemed

possible all the long while that he had adored her, up to an hour

ago; but The little less, and what worlds away!

He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not

indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate

to set him right. Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes

which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the

tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her

ostensible one, discordant and contrasting? He reclined on his couch in the sitting-room, and extinguished the

light. The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned

and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his

happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to

swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little

disturbance or change of mien.




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