aven's sake don't be so desperate!" Troy said, snappishly,
rising as he did so, and leaving the room.

Directly he had gone, Bathsheba burst into great sobs--dry-eyed sobs,
which cut as they came, without any softening by tears. But she
determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered;
but she would never own it as long as she lived. Her pride was
indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by
marriage with a less pure nature than her own. She chafed to and fro
in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms,
and the blood fired her face. Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had
been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to
know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth--that her
waist had never been encircled by a lover's arm. She hated herself
now. In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret
contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking
young fellow who should choose to salute them. She had never taken
kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of
women she saw about her. In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover
she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied
her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice
than of promotion and honour. Although she scarcely knew the
divinity's name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively
adored. That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man
to approach her--that she had felt herself sufficient to herself,
and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was
a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden
existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial
whole--were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh, if she had never
stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only
stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy
or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference!

The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse
saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way. When she
came in at half-past eight--their usual hour for breakfasting--she
was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and
driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.

After breakfast she was cool and collected--quite herself in
fact--and she rambled to