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 ing upon the future of other people than ourselves. Think of years to come, and children being brought to us, and this past matter getting known—for it must get known. There is not an uttermost part of the earth but somebody comes from it or goes to it from elsewhere. Well, think of wretches of our flesh and blood growing up under a taunt which they will gradually get to feel the full force of with their expanding years. What an awakening for them! What a prospect! Can you honestly say Remain, after contemplating this contingency? Don’t you think we had better endure the ills we have than fly to others?’

Her eyelids, weighted with trouble, continued drooping as before.

‘I cannot say Remain,’ she answered. ‘I cannot; I had not thought so far.’

Tess’s feminine hope—shall we confess it—had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness even against his judgment. Though unsophisticated in the usual sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency of womanhood if she had not instinctively known