ast side of the story may as well remain untold.
I have lost all through you, but I have not complained. Your blunders
and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you, but they have been a
wrong to me. All persons of refinement have been scared away from me
since I sank into the mire of marriage. Is this your cherishing--to
put me into a hut like this, and keep me like the wife of a hind? You
deceived me--not by words, but by appearances, which are less seen
through than words. But the place will serve as well as any other--as
somewhere to pass from--into my grave." Her words were smothered in her
throat, and her head drooped down.

"I don't know what you mean by that. Am I the cause of your sin?"
(Eustacia made a trembling motion towards him.) "What, you can begin to
shed tears and offer me your hand? Good God! can you? No, not I. I'll
not commit the fault of taking that." (The hand she had offered dropped
nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.) "Well, yes, I'll take
it, if only for the sake of my own foolish kisses that were wasted there
before I knew what I cherished. How bewitched I was! How could there be
any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?"

"O, O, O!" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking with sobs
which choked her, she sank upon her knees. "O, will you have done! O,
you are too relentless--there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! I
have held out long--but you crush me down. I beg for mercy--I cannot
bear this any longer--it is inhuman to go further with this! If I
had--killed your--mother with my own hand--I should not deserve such
a scourging to the bone as this. O, O! God have mercy upon a miserable
woman!... You have beaten me in this game--I beg you to stay your hand in
pity!... I confess that I--wilfully did not undo the door the first time
she knocked--but--I should have unfastened it the second--if I had
not thought you had gone to do it yourself. When I found you had not I
opened it, but she was gone. That's the extent of my crime--towards HER.
Best natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?--I think they do.
Now I will leave you--for ever and ever!"

"Tell all, and I WILL pity you. Was the man in the house with you
Wildeve?"

"I cannot tell," she said desperately through her sobbing. "Don't insist
further--I cannot tell. I am going from this house. We cannot both stay
here."

"You need not go--I will go. You can stay here."

"No, I will dress, and then I will go