wrong, Sue! I never thought you cared for me at all,
till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care for me,
Sue?--you know how I mean?--I don't like 'out of charity' at all!"

It was a question which in the circumstances Sue did not choose to
answer.

"I suppose she--your wife--is--a very pretty woman, even if she's
wicked?" she asked quickly.

"She's pretty enough, as far as that goes."

"Prettier than I am, no doubt!"

"You are not the least alike. And I have never seen her for
years... But she's sure to come back--they always do!"

"How strange of you to stay apart from her like this!" said Sue,
her trembling lip and lumpy throat belying her irony. "You, such a
religious man. How will the demi-gods in your Pantheon--I mean those
legendary persons you call saints--intercede for you after this?
Now if I had done such a thing it would have been different, and not
remarkable, for I at least don't regard marriage as a sacrament.
Your theories are not so advanced as your practice!"

"Sue, you are terribly cutting when you like to be--a perfect
Voltaire! But you must treat me as you will!"

When she saw how wretched he was she softened, and trying to blink
away her sympathetic tears said with all the winning reproachfulness
of a heart-hurt woman: "Ah--you should have told me before you gave
me that idea that you wanted to be allowed to love me! I had no
feeling before that moment at the railway-station, except--" For
once Sue was as miserable as he, in her attempts to keep herself free
from emotion, and her less than half-success.

"Don't cry, dear!" he implored.

"I am--not crying--because I meant to--love you; but because of your
want of--confidence!"

They were quite screened from the market-square without, and he could
not help putting out his arm towards her waist. His momentary desire
was the means of her rallying. "No, no!" she said, drawing back
stringently, and wiping her eyes. "Of course not! It would be
hypocrisy to pretend that it would be meant as from my cousin; and it
can't be in any other way."

They moved on a dozen paces, and she showed herself recovered. It
was distracting to Jude, and his heart would have ached less had she
appeared anyhow but as she did appear; essentially large-minded and
generous on reflection, despite a previous exercise of those narrow
womanly humours on impulse that were necessary to give her sex.

"I don't blame you for what you couldn't