oke cruel words to her, and she left my house. I did not invite her
back till it was too late. It is I who ought to have drowned myself. It
would have been a charity to the living had the river overwhelmed me and
borne her up. But I cannot die. Those who ought to have lived lie dead;
and here am I alive!"

"But you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way," said Venn. "You
may as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder by the child,
for without the parents the child would never have been begot."

"Yes, Venn, that is very true; but you don't know all the circumstances.
If it had pleased God to put an end to me it would have been a good
thing for all. But I am getting used to the horror of my existence. They
say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance
with it. Surely that time will soon come to me!"

"Your aim has always been good," said Venn. "Why should you say such
desperate things?"

"No, they are not desperate. They are only hopeless; and my great regret
is that for what I have done no man or law can punish me!"

BOOK SIX -- AFTERCOURSES

1--The Inevitable Movement Onward

The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was told throughout
Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. All the known
incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and
modified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance to the
counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues. Yet, upon the whole,
neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death. Misfortune
had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a
catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an
uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and
decay.

On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different.
Strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of one more;
but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginings amount to
appreciable preparation for it. The very suddenness of her bereavement
dulled, to some extent, Thomasin's feelings; yet irrationally enough, a
consciousness that the husband she had lost ought to have been a better
man did not lessen her mourning at all. On the contrary, this fact
seemed at first to set off the dead husband in his young wife's eyes,
and to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow.

But the horrors of the unknown had passed. Vague misgivings