Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/464

 V

next afternoon the familiar Christminster fog still hung over all things. Sue's slim shape was only just discernible going towards the station.

Jude had no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass. He went in an opposite one—to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where boughs dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had never been before.

"Sue's gone from me—gone!" he murmured, miserably.

She in the mean time had left by the train, and reached Alfredston Road, where she entered the steam-tram and was conveyed into the town. It had been her request to Phillotson that he should not meet her. She wished, she said, to come to him voluntarily, to his very house and hearth-stone.

It was Friday evening, which had been chosen because the school-master was disengaged at four o'clock that day till the Monday morning following. The little car she hired at The Bear to drive her to Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half a mile from the village, by her desire, and preceded her to the school-house with such portion of her luggage as she had brought. On its return she encountered it, and asked the driver if he had found the master's house open. The man informed her that he had, and that her things had been taken in by the school-master himself.

She could now enter Marygreen without exciting much observation. She crossed by the well and under the trees