Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/278

 "Don't wish it, dear," he said. That may have been my view, but my doctrines and I begin to part company."

"I knew it—I knew it! And that's why I vowed I wouldn't disturb your beliefs. But—I am so glad to see you!—and, oh, I didn't mean to see you again, now the last tie between us, Aunt Drusilla, is dead!"

Jude seized her hand and kissed it. There is a stronger one left!" he said. "I'll never care about my doctrines or my religion any more! Let them go! Let me help you, even if I do love you, and even if you..."

"Don't say it!—I know what you mean; but I can't admit so much as that. There! Guess what you like, but don't press me to answer questions!"

"I wish you were happy, whatever I may be!"

"I can't be! So few could enter into my feeling—they would say 'twas my fanciful fastidiousness, or something of that sort, and condemn me.... It is none of the natural tragedies of love that's love's usual tragedy in civilized life, but a tragedy artificially manufactured for people who in a natural state would find relief in parting!... It would have been wrong, perhaps, for me to tell my distress to you, if I had been able to tell it to anybody else. But I have nobody. And I must tell somebody! Jude, before I married him I had never thought out fully what marriage meant, even though I knew. It was idiotic of me—there is no excuse. I was old enough, and I thought I was very experienced. So I rushed on, when I had got into that Training-School scrape, with all the cocksureness of the fool that I was!... I am certain one ought to be allowed to undo what one has done so ignorantly! I dare say it happens to lots of women; only they submit, and I kick.... When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times that we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they say!"

"You are very bitter, darling Sue! How I wish—I wish—"