r dear heart away with his unfathomable lies! ... It is a
fortunate thing for him that he's gone back to his regiment--that
he's away up the country, and not here! I hope he may not return
here just yet. I pray God he may not come into my sight, for I may
be tempted beyond myself. Oh, Bathsheba, keep him away--yes, keep
him away from me!"

For a moment Boldwood stood so inertly after this that his soul
seemed to have been entirely exhaled with the breath of his
passionate words. He turned his face away, and withdrew, and his
form was soon covered over by the twilight as his footsteps mixed
in with the low hiss of the leafy trees.

Bathsheba, who had been standing motionless as a model all this
latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to
ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding
wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were
incomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to
repression he was--what she had seen him.

The force of the farmer's threats lay in their relation to a
circumstance known at present only to herself: her lover was coming
back to Weatherbury in the course of the very next day or two. Troy
had not returned to his distant barracks as Boldwood and others
supposed, but had merely gone to visit some acquaintance in Bath,
and had yet a week or more remaining to his furlough.

She felt wretchedly certain that if he revisited her just at this
nick of time, and came into contact with Boldwood, a fierce quarrel
would be the consequence. She panted with solicitude when she
thought of possible injury to Troy. The least spark would kindle
the farmer's swift feelings of rage and jealousy; he would lose his
self-mastery as he had this evening; Troy's blitheness might become
aggressive; it might take the direction of derision, and Boldwood's
anger might then take the direction of revenge.

With almost a morbid dread of being thought a gushing girl, this
guileless woman too well concealed from the world under a manner of
carelessness the warm depths of her strong emotions. But now there
was no reserve. In her distraction, instead of advancing further she
walked up and down, beating the air with her fingers, pressing on her
brow, and sobbing brokenly to herself. Then she sat down on a heap
of stones by the wayside to think. There she remained long. Above
the dark margin of the earth appeared foreshores and promontories of