ad you felt careless
about your own affliction, you might have refrained from singing out
of sheer pity for mine. God! if I were a man in such a position I would
curse rather than sing."

Yeobright placed his hand upon her arm. "Now, don't you suppose, my
inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in high Promethean fashion,
against the gods and fate as well as you. I have felt more steam and
smoke of that sort than you have ever heard of. But the more I see of
life the more do I perceive that there is nothing particularly great in
its greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small in mine of
furze-cutting. If I feel that the greatest blessings vouchsafed to us
are not very valuable, how can I feel it to be any great hardship when
they are taken away? So I sing to pass the time. Have you indeed lost
all tenderness for me, that you begrudge me a few cheerful moments?"

"I have still some tenderness left for you."

"Your words have no longer their old flavour. And so love dies with good
fortune!"

"I cannot listen to this, Clym--it will end bitterly," she said in a
broken voice. "I will go home."

3--She Goes Out to Battle against Depression

A few days later, before the month of August has expired, Eustacia and
Yeobright sat together at their early dinner.

Eustacia's manner had become of late almost apathetic. There was a
forlorn look about her beautiful eyes which, whether she deserved it or
not, would have excited pity in the breast of anyone who had known her
during the full flush of her love for Clym. The feelings of husband and
wife varied, in some measure, inversely with their positions. Clym, the
afflicted man, was cheerful; and he even tried to comfort her, who had
never felt a moment of physical suffering in her whole life.

"Come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again. Some day
perhaps I shall see as well as ever. And I solemnly promise that I'll
leave off cutting furze as soon as I have the power to do anything
better. You cannot seriously wish me to stay idling at home all day?"

"But it is so dreadful--a furze-cutter! and you a man who have lived
about the world, and speak French, and German, and who are fit for what
is so much better than this."

"I suppose when you first saw me and heard about me I was wrapped in a
sort of golden halo to your eyes--a man who knew glorious things,
and had mixed in brilliant scenes--in short, an adorable, delightful,
distracting hero?