Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/206

 "Only a little—not very."

Jude entered and ascended. On reaching the landing a voice told him which way to turn—the voice of Sue calling his name. He passed the doorway, and found her lying in a little bed in a room a dozen feet square.

"Oh, Sue!" he cried, sitting down beside her and taking her hand, "how is this? You couldn't write?"

"No—it wasn't that!" she answered. "I did catch a bad cold—but I could have written. Only I wouldn't!"

"Why not?—frightening me like this!"

"Yes—that was what I was afraid of! But I had decided not to write to you any more. They won't have me back at the school—that's why I couldn't write. Not the fact, but the reason!"

"Well?"

"They not only won't have me, but they give me a parting piece of advice—"

"What?"

She did not answer directly. "I vowed I never would tell you, Jude—it is so vulgar and distressing!"

"Is it about us?"

"Yes."

"But do tell me!"

"Well—somebody has sent them baseless reports about us, and they say you and I ought to marry as soon as possible, for the sake of my reputation!... There—now I have told you, and I wish I hadn't!"

"Oh, poor Sue!"

"I don't think of you like that means! It did just occur to me to regard you in the way they think I do, but I hadn't begun to. I have recognized that the cousinship was merely nominal, since we met as total strangers. But my marrying you, dear Jude—why, of course, if I had reckoned upon marrying you I shouldn't have come to you so often! And I never supposed you thought of such a thing as marrying me till the other evening, when I began to fancy you did love me a little. Perhaps I