omes. I may feel as well as you that I
have a perfect right to live with you as you thought--from this
moment. I may hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society,
the father of a woman's child will be as much a private matter of
hers as the cut of her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any
right to question her. But partly, perhaps, because it is by his
generosity that I am now free, I would rather not be other than a
little rigid. If there had been a rope-ladder, and he had run after
us with pistols, it would have seemed different, and I may have acted
otherwise. But don't press me and criticize me, Jude! Assume that
I haven't the courage of my opinions. I know I am a poor miserable
creature. My nature is not so passionate as yours!"

He repeated simply! "I thought--what I naturally thought. But if we
are not lovers, we are not. Phillotson thought so, I am sure. See,
here is what he has written to me." He opened the letter she had
brought, and read:

"I make only one condition--that you are tender and kind to her. I
know you love her. But even love may be cruel at times. You are
made for each other: it is obvious, palpable, to any unbiased older
person. You were all along 'the shadowy third' in my short life with
her. I repeat, take care of Sue."

"He's a good fellow, isn't he!" she said with latent tears. On
reconsideration she added, "He was very resigned to letting me
go--too resigned almost! I never was so near being in love with him
as when he made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfortable
on my journey, and offering to provide money. Yet I was not. If I
loved him ever so little as a wife, I'd go back to him even now."

"But you don't, do you?"

"It is true--oh so terribly true!--I don't."

"Nor me neither, I half-fear!" he said pettishly. "Nor anybody
perhaps! Sue, sometimes, when I am vexed with you, I think you are
incapable of real love."

"That's not good and loyal of you!" she said, and drawing away from
him as far as she could, looked severely out into the darkness. She
added in hurt tones, without turning round: "My liking for you is
not as some women's perhaps. But it is a delight in being with you,
of a supremely delicate kind, and I don't want to go further and risk
it by--an attempt to intensify it! I quite realized that, as woman
with man, it was a risk to come. But, as me with you, I resolved to
trust you to set my wishes above your gratificat