Where are dear Apollo, and dear Venus now!"
"Oh don't, don't be so cruel to me, Jude, and I so unhappy!" she sobbed.
"I can't bear it!
I was in error—I cannot reason with you.
I was wrong—proud in my own conceit!
Arabella's coming was the finish.
Don't satirize me: it cuts like a knife!"
He flung his arms round her and kissed her passionately there in the silent street, before she could hinder him.
They went on till they came to a little coffee-house.
"Jude," she said with suppressed tears, "would you mind getting a lodging here?"
"I will—if, if you really wish?
But do you?
Let me go to our door and understand you."
He went and conducted her in. She said she wanted no supper, and went in the dark upstairs and struck a light.
Turning she found that Jude had followed her, and was standing at the chamber door.
She went to him, put her hand in his, and said
"Good-night."
"But Sue!
Don't we live here?"
"You said you would do as I wished!"
"Yes.
Very well! … Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue distastefully as I have done!
Perhaps as we couldn't conscientiously marry at first in the old-fashioned way, we ought to have parted.
Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as ours!
Who were we, to think we could act as pioneers!"
"I am so glad you see that much, at any rate.
I never deliberately meant to do as I did.
I slipped into my false position through jealousy and agitation!"
"But surely through love—you loved me?"
"Yes.
But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere lovers; until—"
"But people in love couldn't live for ever like that!"
"Women could: men can't, because they—won't.
An average woman is in this superior to an average man—that she never instigates, only responds.
We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more."
"I was the unhappy cause of the change, as I have said before! … Well, as you will! … But human nature can't help being itself."
"Oh yes—that's just what it has to learn—self-mastery."
"I repeat—if either were to blame it was not you but I."
"No—it was I.
Your wickedness was only the natural man's desire to possess the woman.
Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy stimulated me to oust Arabella.
I had thought I ought in charity to let you approach me—that it was damnably selfish to torture you as I did my other friend.
But I shouldn't have given way if you hadn't broken me down by making me fear you would go back to her… But don't let us say any more about it!
Jude, will you leave me to myself now?"
"Yes… But Sue—my wife, as you are!" he burst out; "my old reproach to you was, after all, a true one.
You have never loved me as I love you—never—never!
Yours is not a passionate heart—your heart does not burn in a flame!
You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite—not a woman!"
"At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own.
When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me.