Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/217

 tions of confidence seemed suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of sex to sex were left without any counterpoising predilections. She was his comrade, friend, unconscious sweetheart, no longer; and her eyes regarded him in estranged silence.

"I was ashamed of the episode in my life which brought about the marriage," he continued. "I can't explain it precisely now. I could have done it if you had taken it differently!"

But how can I?" she burst out. "Here I have been saying, or writing, that—that you might love me, or something of the sort!—just out of charity—and all the time—oh, it is perfectly damnable how things are!" she said, stamping her foot in a nervous quiver.

"You take me wrong, Sue! I never thought you cared for me at all, till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care for me, Sue?—you know how I mean?—I don't like 'out of charity' at all!"

It was a question which, in the circumstances, Sue did not choose to answer.

"I suppose she—your wife—is—a very pretty woman, even if she's wicked?" she asked, quickly.

"She's pretty enough, as far as that goes."

"Prettier than I am, no doubt!"

"You are not the least alike. And I have never seen her for years.... But she's sure to come back—they always do!"

"How strange of you to stay apart from her like this!" said Sue, her trembling lip and lumpy throat belying her irony—"you such a religious man! How will the demigods in your Pantheon—I mean those legendary persons you call Saints—intercede for you after this? Now if I had done such a thing it would have been different, and not remarkable, for I, at least, don't regard marriage as a Sacrament. Your theories are not so advanced as your practice!"

"Sue, you are terribly cutting when you like to be—-