Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/498

 there's anything more degrading, immoral, unnatural, than another in my life, it is this meretricious contract with Arabella which has been called doing the right thing! And you, too—you call yourself Phillotson's wife! His wife! You are mine!"

"Don't make me rush away from you—I can't bear much! But on this point I am decided."

"I cannot understand how you did it—how you think it—I cannot!"

"Never mind that. He is a kind husband to me, and I—I've wrestled and struggled, and fasted and prayed. I have nearly brought my body into complete subjection. And you mustn't—will you—wake—"

"Oh, you darling little fool; where is your reason? You seem to have suffered the loss of your faculties! I would argue with you if I didn't know that a woman in your state of feeling is quite beyond all appeals to her brains. Or is it that you are humbugging yourself, as so many women do about these things, and don't actually believe what you pretend to, and only are indulging in the luxury of the emotion raised by an affected belief?"

"Luxury! How can you be so cruel!"

"You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your scorn of convention gone? I would have died game!"

"You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!" She turned off quickly.

"I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are not worth a man's love!"

Her bosom began to go up and down. "I can't endure you to say that " she burst out; and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back impulsively. "Don't, don't scorn me! Kiss me—oh, kiss me!—lots of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug—I can't bear it!" She rushed up to him, and, with her