think of far more ambitious things. But it was Thomasin's fault.

"She won you away from me, and she deserves to suffer for it. Where is
she staying now? Not that I care, nor where I am myself. Ah, if I were
dead and gone how glad she would be! Where is she, I ask?"

"Thomasin is now staying at her aunt's shut up in a bedroom, and keeping
out of everybody's sight," he said indifferently.

"I don't think you care much about her even now," said Eustacia with
sudden joyousness, "for if you did you wouldn't talk so coolly about
her. Do you talk so coolly to her about me? Ah, I expect you do! Why did
you originally go away from me? I don't think I can ever forgive you,
except on one condition, that whenever you desert me, you come back
again, sorry that you served me so."

"I never wish to desert you."

"I do not thank you for that. I should hate it to be all smooth. Indeed,
I think I like you to desert me a little once now and then. Love is the
dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. O, it is a shame to
say so; but it is true!" She indulged in a little laugh. "My low spirits
begin at the very idea. Don't you offer me tame love, or away you go!"

"I wish Tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little woman," said
Wildeve, "so that I could be faithful to you without injuring a worthy
person. It is I who am the sinner after all; I am not worth the little
finger of either of you."

"But you must not sacrifice yourself to her from any sense of justice,"
replied Eustacia quickly. "If you do not love her it is the most
merciful thing in the long run to leave her as she is. That's always
the best way. There, now I have been unwomanly, I suppose. When you have
left me I am always angry with myself for things that I have said to
you."

Wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. The
pause was filled up by the intonation of a pollard thorn a little way to
windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as through
a strainer. It was as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth.

She continued, half sorrowfully, "Since meeting you last, it has
occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not for love of me you
did not marry her. Tell me, Damon--I'll try to bear it. Had I nothing
whatever to do with the matter?"

"Do you press me to tell?"

"Yes, I must know. I see I have been too ready to believe in my own
power."

"Well, the immediate reason was that the license would no