Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/77

 IX

was some two months later in the year, and the pair had met constantly during the interval. Arabella seemed dissatisfied; she was always imagining and waiting and wondering.

One day she met the itinerant Vilbert. She, like all the cottagers thereabout, knew the quack well, and they began talking about her experiences. Arabella had been gloomy, but before he left her she had grown brighter. That evening she kept an appointment with Jude, who seemed sad.

"I am going away," he said to her. "I think I ought to go. I think it will be better both for you and for me. I wish some things had never begun! I was much to blame, I know. But it is never too late to mend."

Arabella began to cry. "How do you know it is not too late?" she said. "That's all very well to say! I haven't told you yet!" and she looked into his face with streaming eyes.

"What?" he asked, turning pale. "Not...?"

"Yes! And what shall I do if you desert me?"

"Oh, Arabella—how can you say that, my dear! You know I wouldn't desert you!"

"Well, then—"

"I have next to no wages as yet, you know; or perhaps I should have thought of this before... But, of course, if that's the case, we must marry! What other thing do you think I could dream of doing?"

"I thought—I thought, deary, perhaps you would go away all the more for that, and leave me to face it alone!"