Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/285

 maintain that before a thing was done it might be right to do, but that being done it became wrong; or, in other words, that things which were right in theory were wrong in practice.

"I have been too weak, I think!" she jerked out as she pranced on, shaking down tear-drops now and then. "It was burning, like a lover's—oh, it was! And I won't write to him any more—or, at least, for a long time, to impress him with my dignity! And I hope it will hurt him very much—expecting a letter to-morrow morning, and the next, and the next, and no letter coming. He'll suffer then with suspense—won't he, that's all!—and I am very glad of it!" Tears of pity for Jude's approaching sufferings at her hands mingled with those which had surged up in pity for herself.

Then the slim little wife of a husband whose person was disagreeable to her, the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with any man, walked fitfully along, and panted, and brought weariness into her eyes by gazing and worrying hopelessly.

Phillotson met her at the arrival station, and, seeing that she was troubled, thought it must be owing to the depressing effect of her aunt's death and funeral. He began telling her of his day's doings, and how his friend Gillingham, a neighboring school master whom he had not seen for years, had called upon him. While ascending to the town, seated on the top of the omnibus beside him, she said, suddenly, and with an air of self-chastisement, regarding the white road and its bordering bushes of hazel:

"Richard, I let Mr. Fawley hold my hand. I don't know whether you think it wrong."

He, waking apparently from thoughts of far different mould, said, vaguely, "Oh, did you? What did you do that for?"