Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/275

 "I—I think I must be equally honest with you as you have been with me. Perhaps you have seen what it is I want to say—that though I like Mr. Phillotson as a friend, I don't like him—it is a torture to me to—live with him as a husband! There, now I have let it out—I couldn't help it, although I have been—pretending I am happy. Now you'll have a contempt for me forever, I suppose!" She bent down her face upon her hands as they lay upon the cloth, and silently sobbed in little jerks that made the fragile three-legged table quiver.

"I have only been married a month or two!" she went on, still remaining bent upon the table, and talking into her hands. "And it is said that what a woman shrinks from—in the early days of her marriage—she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a dozen years. But that is much like saying that the amputation of a limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time!"

Jude could hardly speak, but he said, "I thought there was something wrong, Sue! Oh, I thought there was!"

"But it is not as you think!―there is nothing wrong except my own wickedness, I suppose you'd call it―a repugnance on my part, for a reason I cannot disclose, and what would not be admitted as one by the world in general!... What tortures me so much is the necessity of being responsive to this man whenever he wishes, good as he is morally!―the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way, in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness!... I wish he would beat me, or be faithless to me, or do some open thing that I could talk about as a justification for feeling as I do! But he does nothing, except that he has grown a little cold since he has found out how I feel. That's why he didn't come to the funeral.... Oh, I am very miserable—I don't know what to do!... Don't come near me, Jude, because you mustn't."