Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/198

 "To be ordained, I think you said?"

"Yes."

"Then you haven't given up the idea? I thought that perhaps you had by this time."

"Of course not. I fondly thought at first that you felt as I do about that, as you were so steeped in Christminster. And Mr. Phillotson—"

"I have no respect for Christminster whatever, except, in a qualified degree, on its intellectual side," said Sue Bridehead, earnestly. "My friend I spoke of took that out of me. He was the most irreligious man I ever knew, and the most moral. And intellect at Christminster is new wine in old bottles. The mediævalism of Christminster must go, be sloughed off, or Christminster itself will have to go. To be sure, at times one couldn't help having a sneaking liking for the traditions of the old faith, as preserved by a section of the thinkers there in touching and simple sincerity; but when I was in my saddest, rightest, mind I always felt.

"Sue, you are not a good friend of mine to talk like that!"

"Then I won't, dear Jude!" The emotional throat-note had come back, and she turned her face away.

"I still think Christminster has much that is glorious, though I was resentful because I couldn't get there." He spoke gently, and resisted his impulse to pique her on to tears.

"It is an ignorant place, except as to the townspeople, artisans, drunkards, and paupers," she said, hurt still at his differing from her. "They see life as it is, of course; but few of the people in the colleges do. You prove it in your own person. You are one of the very men Christminster was intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportu-