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 ‘Nonsense; I don’t want to touch you. See—I’ll stand on this side of the wire-netting, and you can keep on the other; so you may feel quite safe. Now, look here; you screw up your lips too harshly. There ’tis—so.’

He suited the action to the word, and whistled a line of ‘Take, O take those lips away.’ But the allusion was lost upon Tess.

‘Now try’, said D’Urberville.

She attempted to look reserved; her face put on its utmost phase of sculptural severity. But he persisted in his demand, and at last, to get rid of him, she did put up her lips as directed, laughing distressfully, however, before she could succeed in producing a clear note, and then blushing with vexation that she had laughed.

He encouraged her with ‘Try again!’

Tess was quite serious, painfully serious by this time; and she tried—ultimately and unexpectedly emitting a real round sound. The momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes enlarged, and she involuntarily smiled in his face.

‘That’s it! Now I have started you—you’ll go on beautifully. There—I said I would not