Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/241

 IX

the morrow, between nine and half-past, they were journeying back to Christminster, the only two occupants of a compartment in a third-class railway-carriage. Having, like Jude, made rather a hasty toilet to catch the train, Arabella looked a little frowsy, and her face was very far from possessing the animation which had characterized it at the bar the night before. When they came out of the station she found that she still had half an hour to spare before she was due at the bar. They walked in silence a little way out of the town in the direction of Alfredston. Jude looked up the far highway.

"Ah... poor feeble me!" he murmured at last.

"What?" said she.

"This is the very road by which I came into Christminster years ago full of plans!"

"Well, whatever the road is, I think my time is nearly up as I have to be in the bar by eleven o'clock. And, as I said, I sha'n't ask for the day to go with you to see your aunt. So perhaps we had better part here. I'd sooner not walk up Chief Street with you, since we've come to no conclusion at all."

"Very well. But you said when we were getting up this morning that you had something you wished to tell me before I left?"

"So I had—two things—one in particular. But you wouldn't promise to keep it a secret. I'll tell you now, if you promise? As an honest woman, I wish you to know it.... It was what I began telling you in the night—about that gentleman who managed the Sydney hotel."