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 despise you was on account of your intrinsic purity in spite of all; you withdrew yourself from me so quickly and resolutely when you saw the situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so there was one victim in the world for whom I had no contempt, and you are she. But you may well despise me now! I thought I worshipped on the mountains, but I find I still serve in the groves. Ha! ha!'

'O Alec D'Urberville! what does this mean? What have I done!'

'Done?' he said, with a soulless sneer at himself. Nothing intentionally. But you have been the means—the innocent means—of my backsliding, as they call it. I ask myself, am I, indeed, one of those "servants of corruption" who, "after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, are again entangled therein and overcome"—whose latter end is worse than their beginning?' He laid his hand on her shoulder. 'Tess, Tess, I was on the way to salvation till I saw you again!' he said, feverishly shaking her, as if she were a child. 'And why then have you tempted me? I was firm as a man could be till I saw those eyes and that mouth again—surely