Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/311

 "Yes, I shall be free."

"Where are we booked for?" she asked, with the discontinuity that marked her to-night.

"Aldbrickham, as I said."

"But it will be very late when we get there?"

"Yes. I thought of that, and I wired for a room for us at the Temperance Hotel there."

"One?"

"Yes―one."

She looked at him. "Oh, Jude!" Sue bent her forehead against the corner of the compartment. "I thought you might do it, and that I was deceiving you. But I didn't mean that!"

In the pause which followed, Jude's eyes fixed themselves with a stultified expression on the opposite seat.

"Well!" he said.... "Well!"

He remained in silence; but seeing how discomfited he was, she put her face against his cheek, murmuring, "Don't be vexed, dear!"

"Oh—there's no harm done," he said. But I understood it like that.... Is this a sudden change of mind?"

"You have no right to ask me such a question, and I sha'n't answer!" she said, smiling.

"My dear one, your happiness is more to me than anything—although we seem to verge on quarrelling so often—and your will is law to me. I am something more than a mere—selfish fellow, I hope. Have it as you wish!" On reflection his brow showed perplexity. "But perhaps it is that you don't love me—not that you have become conventional. Much as, under your teaching, I hate convention, I hope it is that, not the other terrible alternative!"

Even at this obvious moment for candor Sue could not be quite candid as to the state of that mystery, her heart. "Put it down to my timidity," she said, with hurried evasiveness; "to a woman's natural timidity when the crisis comes. I may feel as well as you that I have a perfect right to live with you as you thought—from this moment.