Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/291

 "As his wife?"

"As I choose."

Phillotson writhed.

Sue continued: "She, or he, who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.' J. S. Mill's words, those are. Why can't you act upon them? I wish to, always."

"What do I care about J. S. Mill!" moaned he. "I only want to lead a quiet life! Do you mind my saying that I have guessed what never once occurred to me before our marriage—that you were in love, and are in love, with Jude Fawley!"

"You may go on guessing that I am, since you have begun. But do you suppose that if I had been I should have asked you to let me go and live with him?"

The ringing of the school-bell saved Phillotson from the necessity of replying at present to what apparently did not strike him as being such a convincing argumentum ad verecundiam as she, in her loss of courage at the last moment, meant it to appear. She was beginning to be so puzzling and unpredicable that he was ready to throw in with her other little peculiarities the extremest request which a wife could make.

They proceeded to the schools that morning as usual, Sue entering the class-room, where he could see the back of her head through the glass partition whenever he turned his eyes that way. As he went on giving and hearing lessons his forehead and eyebrows twitched from concentrated agitation of thought; till at length he tore a scrap from a sheet of scribbling paper and wrote:

"Your request prevents my attending to work at all. I don't know what I am doing! Was it seriously made?"

He folded the piece of paper very small, and gave it to a little boy to take to Sue. The child toddled off into