Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/451

 ately there in the silent street, before she could hinder him. They went on till they came to a little coffee-house. "Jude," she said, with suppressed tears, "would you mind getting a lodging here?"

"I will—if, if you really wish? But do you? Let me go to our door and understand you." He went and conducted her in. She said she wanted no supper, and went in the dark up-stairs and struck a light. Turning she found that Jude had followed her, and was standing at the chamber door. She went to him, put her hand in his, and said, "Good-night."

"But Sue! Don't we live here?"

"You said you would do as I wished!"

"Yes. Very well!... Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue distastefully as I have done! Perhaps, as we couldn't conscientiously marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted. Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as ours! Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"

"I am so glad you see that much, at any rate. I never deliberately meant to do as I did. I slipped into my false position through jealousy and agitation."

"But surely through love—you loved me?"

"Yes. But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere lovers; until—"

"But people in love couldn't live forever like that!"

"Women could; men can't, because they—won't. An average woman is in this superior to an average man—that she never instigates, only responds. We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more."

"I was the unhappy cause of the change, as I have said before.... Well, as you will.... But human nature can't help being itself."

'Oh yes—that's just what it has to learn—self-mastery."

"I repeat—if either were to blame it was not you, but I."