Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/199

 nities, or friends. But you were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires' sons."

"Well, I can do without what it confers. I care for something higher."

"And I for something broader, truer," she insisted. "At present intellect in Christminster is pushing one way and religion the other; and so they stand stockstill, like two rams butting each other."

"What would Mr. Phillotson—"

"It is a place full of fetichists and ghost-seers!"

He noticed that whenever he tried to speak of the school-master she turned the conversation to some generalizations about the offending University. Jude was extremely, morbidly, curious about her life as Phillotson's protégée and betrothed; yet she would not enlighten him.

"Well, that's just what I am, too," he said. "I am fearful of life, spectre-seeing always."

"But you are good and dear!" she murmured.

His heart bumped, and he made no reply.

"You are in the Tractarian stage just now, are you not?" she added, putting on flippancy to hide real feeling, a common trick with her. Let me see—when was I there?—In the year eighteen hundred and—"

"There's a sarcasm in that which is rather unpleasant to me, Sue. Now will you do what I want you to? At this time I read a chapter, and then say prayers, as I told you. Now will you concentrate your attention on any book of these you like, and sit with your back to me, and leave me to my custom? You are sure you won't join me?"

"I'll look at you."

"No. Don't tease, Sue!"

"Very well—I'll do just as you bid me, and I won't vex you, Jude," she replied, in the tone of a child who was going to be good forever after, turning her back upon him accordingly. A small Bible other than the one he used