Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/289

 "Richard," she said, all at once, would you mind my living away from you?"

"Away from me? Why, that's what you were doing when I married you. What, then, was the meaning of marrying at all?"

"You wouldn't like me any the better for telling you."

"I don't object to know."

"Because I thought I could do nothing else. You had got my promise a long time before that, remember. Then, as time went on, I regretted I had promised you, and was trying to see an honorable way to break it off. But as I couldn't, I became rather reckless and careless about the conventions. Then you know what was said, and how I was turned out of the Training School you had taken such time and trouble to prepare me for and get me into; and this frightened me, and it seemed then that the one thing I could do would be to let the engagement stand. Of course, I, of all people, ought not to have cared what was said, for it was just what I fancied I never did care for. But I was a coward—as so many women are—and my theoretic unconventionality broke down. If that had not entered into the case it would have been better to have hurt your feelings once for all then, than to marry you and hurt them all my life after.... And you were so generous in never giving credit for a moment to the rumor."

"I am bound in honesty to tell you that I weighed its probability, and inquired of your cousin about it."

"Ah!" she said, with pained surprise.

"I didn't doubt you."

"But you inquired!"

"I took his word."

Her eyes had filled. "He wouldn't have inquired!" she said. But you haven't answered me. Will you let me go away? I know how irregular it is of me to ask it—"

"It is irregular."