ustacia left him. Clym watched her
as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up with
her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting
sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery
overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that
untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the
poorest blade. There was something in its oppressive horizontality which
too much reminded him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare
equality with, and no superiority to, a single living thing under the
sun.

Eustacia was now no longer the goddess but the woman to him, a being
to fight for, support, help, be maligned for. Now that he had reached
a cooler moment he would have preferred a less hasty marriage; but the
card was laid, and he determined to abide by the game. Whether Eustacia
was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly to love
long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly a ready way of
proving.

6--Yeobright Goes, and the Breach Is Complete

All that evening smart sounds denoting an active packing up came from
Yeobright's room to the ears of his mother downstairs.

Next morning he departed from the house and again proceeded across the
heath. A long day's march was before him, his object being to secure a
dwelling to which he might take Eustacia when she became his wife.
Such a house, small, secluded, and with its windows boarded up, he had
casually observed a month earlier, about two miles beyond the village
of East Egdon, and six miles distant altogether; and thither he directed
his steps today.

The weather was far different from that of the evening before. The
yellow and vapoury sunset which had wrapped up Eustacia from his parting
gaze had presaged change. It was one of those not infrequent days of
an English June which are as wet and boisterous as November. The cold
clouds hastened on in a body, as if painted on a moving slide. Vapours
from other continents arrived upon the wind, which curled and parted
round him as he walked on.

At length Clym reached the margin of a fir and beech plantation that had
been enclosed from heath land in the year of his birth. Here the trees,
laden heavily with their new and humid leaves, were now suffering more
damage than during the highest winds of winter, when the boughs are
especially disencumbered to do battle with the storm. The wet young
beeche