ike mine. He is not doing it so much on his own account as on
hers. She wrote and told him it would be a kindness to her, since
then she could marry and live respectably. And Jude has agreed."

"A wife... A kindness to her. Ah, yes; a kindness to her to release
her altogether... But I don't like the sound of it. I can forgive,
Sue."

"No, no! You can't have me back now I have been so wicked--as to do
what I have done!"

There had arisen in Sue's face that incipient fright which showed
itself whenever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her
adopt any line of defence against marital feeling in him. "I MUST go
now. I'll come again--may I?"

"I don't ask you to go, even now. I ask you to stay."

"I thank you, Richard; but I must. As you are not so ill as I
thought, I CANNOT stay!"

"She's his--his from lips to heel!" said Phillotson; but so faintly
that in closing the door she did not hear it. The dread of a
reactionary change in the schoolmaster's sentiments, coupled,
perhaps, with a faint shamefacedness at letting even him know
what a slipshod lack of thoroughness, from a man's point of view,
characterized her transferred allegiance, prevented her telling him
of her, thus far, incomplete relations with Jude; and Phillotson lay
writhing like a man in hell as he pictured the prettily dressed,
maddening compound of sympathy and averseness who bore his name,
returning impatiently to the home of her lover.

Gillingham was so interested in Phillotson's affairs, and so
seriously concerned about him, that he walked up the hill-side to
Shaston two or three times a week, although, there and back, it was
a journey of nine miles, which had to be performed between tea and
supper, after a hard day's work in school. When he called on the
next occasion after Sue's visit his friend was downstairs, and
Gillingham noticed that his restless mood had been supplanted by a
more fixed and composed one.

"She's been here since you called last," said Phillotson.

"Not Mrs. Phillotson?"

"Yes."

"Ah! You have made it up?"

"No... She just came, patted my pillow with her little white hand,
played the thoughtful nurse for half an hour, and went away."

"Well--I'm hanged! A little hussy!"

"What do you say?"

"Oh--nothing!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what a tantalizing, capricious little woman! If she were
not your wife--"

"She is not; she's another man's except in name and law. And I hav