Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/448

 probably, as the original it was designed to commemorate. It seemed to be suspended in the air by invisible wires; it was set with large jewels, which faintly glimmered in some weak ray caught from outside, as the cross swayed to and fro in a silent and scarcely perceptible motion. Underneath, upon the floor, lay what appeared to be a heap of black clothes, and from this was repeated the sobbing that he had heard before. It was his Sue's form, prostrate on the paving.

"Sue!" he whispered.

Something white disclosed itself; she had turned up her face.

"What—do you want with me here, Jude?" she said. "You shouldn't come! I wanted to be alone! Why did you intrude here?"

"How can you ask!" he retorted, in quick reproach, for his full heart was wounded to its centre at this attitude of hers towards him. "Why do I come? Who has a right to come, I should like to know, if I have not? I, who love you better than my own self—better—oh, far better—than you have loved me! What made you leave me to come here alone?"

"Don't criticise me, Jude—I can't bear it!—I have often told you so. You must take me as I am. I am a wretch—broken by my distractions! I couldn't bear it when Arabella came—I felt so utterly miserable I had to come away. She seems to be your wife still, and Richard to be my husband!"

"But they are nothing to us!"

"Yes, dear friend, they are. I see marriage differently now. My babies have been taken from me to show me this! Arabella's child killing mine was a judgment—the right slaying the wrong. What, what shall I do! I am such a vile creature—too worthless to mix with ordinary human beings!"

"This is terrible!" said Jude, almost in tears. "It is monstrous and unnatural for you to be so remorseful when you have done no wrong!"