. "I know it--I repeat that I do not blame you. But the fact remains.

When I saw you ill-used on the farm that day I was nearly mad to

think that I had no legal right to protect you--that I could not have

it; whilst he who has it seems to neglect you utterly!"

"Don't speak against him--he is absent!" she cried in much

excitement. "Treat him honourably--he has never wronged you! O

leave his wife before any scandal spreads that may do harm to his

honest name!" "I will--I will," he said, like a man awakening from a luring dream.

"I have broken my engagement to preach to those poor drunken boobies

at the fair--it is the first time I have played such a practical

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joke. A month ago I should have been horrified at such a

possibility. I'll go away--to swear--and--ah, can I! to keep away."

Then, suddenly:

"One clasp, Tessy--one! Only for old friendship--"

"I am without defence. Alec! A good man's honour is in my keeping--

think--be ashamed!"

"Pooh! Well, yes--yes!" He clenched his lips, mortified with himself for his weakness. His

eyes were equally barren of worldly and religious faith. The corpses

of those old fitful passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines

of his face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come

together as in a resurrection. He went out indeterminately.

Though d'Urberville had declared that this breach of his engagement

to-day was the simple backsliding of a believer, Tess's words, as

echoed from Angel Clare, had made a deep impression upon him, and

continued to do so after he had left her. He moved on in silence, as

if his energies were benumbed by the hitherto undreamt-of possibility

that his position was untenable. Reason had had nothing to do with

his whimsical conversion, which was perhaps the mere freak of a

careless man in search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed

by his mother's death. The drops of logic Tess had let fall into the sea of his enthusiasm

served to chill its effervescence to stagnation. He said to himself,

as he pondered again and again over the crystallized phrases that she

had handed on to him, "That clever fellow little thought that, by

telling her those things, he might be paving my way back to her!"

XLVII

It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash farm. The

dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is

nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight

rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly

here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather.




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