Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/304

 "I think she ought to be smacked and brought to her senses—that's what I think!" murmured Gillingham, as he walked back alone.

The next morning came, and at breakfast Phillotson told Sue:

"You may go—with whom you will. I absolutely and unconditionally agree."

Having once come to this conclusion, it seemed to Phillotson more and more indubitably the true one. His mild serenity at the sense that he was doing his duty by a woman who was at his mercy almost overpowered his grief at relinquishing her.

Some days passed, and the evening of their last meal together was come—a cloudy evening with wind—which, indeed, was very seldom absent in this elevated place. How permanently it was imprinted upon his vision; that look of her as she glided into the parlor to tea, a slim flexible figure; a face, strained from its roundness, and marked by the pallors of restless days and nights, suggesting tragic possibilities quite at variance with her times of buoyancy; a trying of this morsel and that, and an inability to eat either. Her nervous manner, begotten of a fear lest he should be injured by her course, might have been interpreted by a stranger as displeasure that Phillotson intruded his presence on her for the few brief minutes that remained.

"You had better have a slice of ham, or an egg, or something with your tea? You can't travel on a mouthful of bread-and-butter."

She took the slice he helped her to; and they discussed, as they sat, trivial questions of housekeeping, such as where he would find the key of this or that cupboard, what little bills were paid, and what not.

"I am a bachelor by nature, as you know, Sue," he said, in a heroic attempt to put her at her ease. "So that being without a wife will not really be irksome to me, as it might be to other men who have had one a little while.