sufferer like fresh air into a
Black Hole. "Nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away. I have
been here before, but you don't remember it."

"Yes, I do; I am not delirious, Thomasin, nor have I been so at all.
Don't you believe that if they say so. I am only in great misery at what
I have done, and that, with the weakness, makes me seem mad. But it
has not upset my reason. Do you think I should remember all about my
mother's death if I were out of my mind? No such good luck. Two months
and a half, Thomasin, the last of her life, did my poor mother live
alone, distracted and mourning because of me; yet she was unvisited
by me, though I was living only six miles off. Two months and a
half--seventy-five days did the sun rise and set upon her in that
deserted state which a dog didn't deserve! Poor people who had nothing
in common with her would have cared for her, and visited her had they
known her sickness and loneliness; but I, who should have been all to
her, stayed away like a cur. If there is any justice in God let Him kill
me now. He has nearly blinded me, but that is not enough. If He would
only strike me with more pain I would believe in Him forever!"

"Hush, hush! O, pray, Clym, don't, don't say it!" implored Thomasin,
affrighted into sobs and tears; while Eustacia, at the other side of
the room, though her pale face remained calm, writhed in her chair. Clym
went on without heeding his cousin.

"But I am not worth receiving further proof even of Heaven's
reprobation. Do you think, Thomasin, that she knew me--that she did not
die in that horrid mistaken notion about my not forgiving her, which I
can't tell you how she acquired? If you could only assure me of that! Do
you think so, Eustacia? Do speak to me."

"I think I can assure you that she knew better at last," said Thomasin.
The pallid Eustacia said nothing.

"Why didn't she come to my house? I would have taken her in and showed
her how I loved her in spite of all. But she never came; and I didn't go
to her, and she died on the heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to
help her till it was too late. If you could have seen her, Thomasin, as
I saw her--a poor dying woman, lying in the dark upon the bare ground,
moaning, nobody near, believing she was utterly deserted by all the
world, it would have moved you to anguish, it would have moved a brute.
And this poor woman my mother! No wonder she said to the child, 'You
have seen a broken-hearted woman.'