Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/460

 To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and right was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired and artificial sense of the same if you wished to enjoy an average share of comfort and honor, and to let loving-kindness take care of itself.

He suggested that she should come to him there at Marygreen.

On second thoughts he took out the last paragraph but one; and having rewritten the letter, he despatched it immediately, and in some excitement awaited the issue.

A few days after a figure moved through the white fog which enveloped the Beersheba suburb of Christminster towards the quarter in which Jude Fawley had taken up his lodging since his division from Sue. A timid knock sounded upon the door of his abode.

It was evening, so he was at home; and by a species of divination he jumped up and rushed to the door himself.

"Will you come out with me? I would rather not come in. I want to—to talk with you, and to go with you to the cemetery."

It had been in the trembling accents of Sue that these words came. Jude put on his hat. "It is dreary for you to be out," he said. But if you prefer not to come in, I don't mind."

"Yes—I do. I shall not keep you long."

Jude was too much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was now such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed to have left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.

"I want to tell you," she presently said, her voice now quick, now slow, "so that you may not hear of it by chance. I am going back to Richard. He has—so magnanimously—agreed to forgive all."