Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/307

 "No—yes—never mind," said Gillingham, preoccupied.

"Gone, you say she is?"

"Yes.... I would have died for her, but I wouldn't be cruel to her in the name of the law. She is, as I understand, gone to join her lover. What they are going to do I cannot say. Whatever it may be, she has my full consent to."

There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which restrained his friend's comment. Shall I—leave you?" he asked.

"No, no. It is a mercy to me that you have come. I have some articles to arrange and clear away. Would you help me?"

Gillingham assented; and having gone to the upper rooms the school-master opened drawers, and began taking out all Sue's things that she had left behind, and laying them in a large box. "She wouldn't take all I wanted her to," he continued. "But when I made up my mind to her going to live in her own way, I did make up my mind."

"Some men would have stopped at an agreement to separate."

"I've gone into all that, and don't wish to argue it. I was, and am, the most old-fashioned man in the world on the question of marriage—in fact, I had never thought critically about its ethics at all. But certain facts stared me in the face, and I couldn't go against them."

They went on with the packing silently. When it was done, Phillotson closed the box and turned the key.

"There!" he said. "To adorn her in somebody's eyes; never again in mine!"