Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/370

 gather not at all under the pressure of her self-consciousness. Sue and Jude listened, and severally saw themselves in time past going through the same form of self-committal.

"It is not the same to her, poor thing, as it would be to me doing it over again with my present knowledge," Sue whispered. "You see, they are fresh to it, and take the proceedings as a matter of course. But having been awakened to its awful solemnity as we have, or, at least, as I have, by experience, and to my own too squeamish feelings perhaps sometimes, it really does seem immoral in me to go and undertake the same thing again with open eyes. Coming in here and seeing this has frightened me from a church wedding as much as the other did from a registry one.... We are a weak, tremulous pair. Jude, and what others may feel confident in I feel doubts of—my being proof against the sordid conditions of a business contract again."

Then they tried to laugh, and went on debating in whispers the object-lesson before them. And Jude said he also thought they were both too thin-skinned; that they ought never to have been born, much less have come together for the most preposterous of all joint-ventures for them—matrimony.

His betrothed shuddered, and asked him earnestly if he indeed felt that they ought not to go in cold blood and sign that life-undertaking again. It is awful if you think we have found ourselves not strong enough for it, and, knowing this, are proposing to perjure ourselves," she said.

"I fancy I do think it—since you ask me," said Jude. "Remember, I'll do it if you wish, own darling." While she hesitated he went on to confess that, though he thought they ought to be able to do it, he felt checked by the dread of incompetency, just as she did—from their peculiarities, perhaps, because they were unlike other people. "We are horribly sensitive; that's really what's the matter with us, Sue!" he declared.