Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/300

 "Sit down. You don't mean—anything wrong between you and Mrs. Phillotson?"

"I do.... My wretched state is that I've a wife I love, who not only does not love me, but—but— Well, I won't say. I know her feeling. I should prefer hatred from her!"

S-sh!"

"And the sad part of it is that she is not so much to blame as I. She was a pupil-teacher under me, as you know, and I took advantage of her inexperience, and toled her out for walks, and got her to agree to a long engagement before she well knew her own mind. Afterwards she saw somebody else, but she blindly fulfilled her engagement."

"Loving the other?"

"Yes; with a curious tender solicitude seemingly, though her exact feeling for him is a riddle to me—and to him, too, I think—possibly to herself. She is one of the oddest creatures I ever met. However, I have been struck with these two facts; the extraordinary sympathy, or similarity, between the pair. (He is her cousin, which perhaps accounts for some of it. They seem to be one person split in two!) And with her unconquerable aversion to myself as a husband, even though she may like me as a friend, 'tis too much to bear longer. She has conscientiously struggled against it, but to no purpose. I cannot bear it—I cannot! I can't answer her arguments―she has read ten times as much as I. Her intellect sparkles like diamonds, while mine smoulders like brown paper.... She's one too many for me!"

"She'll get over it, good-now?"

"Never! It is—but I won't go into it—there are reasons why she never will. At last she calmly and firmly asked if she might leave me and go to him. The climax came last night, when, owing to my entering her room by accident, she jumped out of window—so strong was her dread of me! She pretended it was a dream, but that