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 proposition and the covenant, which she had felt only too quickly.

‘I feared it would come to this,’ she murmured, her countenance fixed in meek vacuity. ‘I don’t complain, Angel. I—I think it best. What you said has quite convinced me. And though nobody else should reproach me if we should stay together, and you should ever, years hence, get angry with me for any ordinary matter, knowing what you do of my bygones, you yourself might be tempted to say words, and they might be overheard, perhaps by my own children. O, what only hurts me now would torture and kill me then! I will go—to-morrow.’

‘And I shall not stay here. Though I didn’t like to initiate it, I have seen that it was advisable we should part—at least for a while, till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write to you.’

Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale, even tremulous; but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle being she had married—the will to subdue the grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the flesh to the