Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/263

 "I didn't quite mean that."

"Oh, but you are one of that sort, for you are just like me at heart."

"But not at head."

She played on, and suddenly turned round; and by an unpremeditated instinct, each clasped the other's hand again.

She uttered a forced little laugh as she relinquished his quickly. "How funny!" she said. "I wonder what we both did that for?"

"I suppose because we are both alike, as I said before."

"Not in our thoughts! Perhaps a little in our feelings."

"And they rule thoughts.... Isn't it enough to make one blaspheme that the composer of that hymn is one of the most commonplace men I ever met!"

"What—you know him?"

"I went to see him."

"Oh, you goose—to do just what I should have done! Why did you?"

"Because we are not alike," he said, dryly.

"Now we'll have some tea," said Sue. "Shall we have it here instead of in my house? It is no trouble to get the kettle and things brought in. We don't live at the school, you know, but in that ancient dwelling across the way called Old-Grove's Place. It is so antique and dismal that it depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are very well to visit, but not to live in—I feel crushed into the earth by the weight of so many previous lives there spent. In a new place like these schools there is only your own life to support. Sit down, and I'll tell Ada to bring the tea-things across."

He waited in the light of the stove, the door of which she flung open before going out, and when she returned, followed by the maiden with tea, they sat down by the same light, assisted by the blue rays of a spirit-lamp under the brass kettle on the stand.