Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/450

 me for the Church as an old acquaintance.... What I can't understand in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic. Is it peculiar to you, or is it common to woman? Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? How you argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract—which it is—how you showed all the objections to it—all the absurdities! If two and two make four when we are happy together, surely they make four now? I can't understand it, I repeat!"

"Ah, dear Jude, that's because you are like a totally deaf man observing people listening to music. You say, What are they regarding? Nothing is there.' But something is."

"That is a hard saying from you, and not a true parallel! You threw off old husks of prejudices, and taught me to do it; and now you go back upon yourself. I confess I am utterly stultified in my estimate of you."

"Dear friend, my only friend, don't be hard with me! I can't help being as I am, and I am convinced I am right—that I see the light at last. But, oh, how to profit by it!"

They walked along a few more steps till they were outside the building, and she had returned the key. Can this be the girl," said Jude, when she came back, feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now that he was in the open street—" can this be the girl who brought the Pagan deities into this most Christian city?—who mimicked Miss Fontover when she crushed them with her heel?—quoted Gibbon and Shelley and Mill? Where are dear Apollo and dear Venus now?"

"Oh, don't, don't be so cruel to me, Jude, and I so unhappy!" she sobbed. "I can't bear it! I was in error—I cannot reason with you. I was wrong—proud in my own conceit! Arabella's coming was the finish. Don't satirize me; it cuts like a knife!"

He flung his arms round her and kissed her passion-