Don't come!"
"What—aren't we going to be friends, then, any longer, as we used to be?"
"No."
"I didn't know that. I thought you were always going to be kind to me!"
"No, I am not."
"What have I done, then?
I am sure I thought we two—" The tremolo in her voice caused her to break off.
"Sue, I sometimes think you are a flirt," said he abruptly.
There was a momentary pause, till she suddenly jumped up; and to his surprise he saw by the kettle-flame that her face was flushed.
"I can't talk to you any longer, Jude!" she said, the tragic contralto note having come back as of old. "It is getting too dark to stay together like this, after playing morbid Good Friday tunes that make one feel what one shouldn't! … We mustn't sit and talk in this way any more. Yes—you must go away, for you mistake me!
I am very much the reverse of what you say so cruelly—Oh, Jude, it was cruel to say that!
Yet I can't tell you the truth—I should shock you by letting you know how I give way to my impulses, and how much I feel that I shouldn't have been provided with attractiveness unless it were meant to be exercised!
Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's licence to receive it.
But you are so straightforward, Jude, that you can't understand me! … Now you must go.
I am sorry my husband is not at home."
"Are you?"
"I perceive I have said that in mere convention!
Honestly I don't think I am sorry.
It does not matter, either way, sad to say!"
As they had overdone the grasp of hands some time sooner, she touched his fingers but lightly when he went out now.
He had hardly gone from the door when, with a dissatisfied look, she jumped on a form and opened the iron casement of a window beneath which he was passing in the path without.
"When do you leave here to catch your train, Jude?" she asked.
He looked up in some surprise.
"The coach that runs to meet it goes in three-quarters of an hour or so."
"What will you do with yourself for the time?"
"Oh—wander about, I suppose.
Perhaps I shall go and sit in the old church."
"It does seem hard of me to pack you off so!
You have thought enough of churches, Heaven knows, without going into one in the dark.
Stay there."
"Where?"
"Where you are.
I can talk to you better like this than when you were inside… It was so kind and tender of you to give up half a day's work to come to see me! … You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude.
And a tragic Don Quixote.
And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened.
Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet!"
Now that the high window-sill was between them, so that he could not get at her, she seemed not to mind indulging in a frankness she had feared at close quarters.
"I have been thinking," she continued, still in the tone of one brimful of feeling, "that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns.
I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name.
But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies… Now you mustn't wait longer, or you will lose the coach.
Come and see me again.
You must come to the house then."
"Yes!" said Jude.
"When shall it be?"
"To-morrow week.
Good-bye—good-bye!"
She stretched out her hand and stroked his forehead pitifully—just once.
Jude said good-bye, and went away into the darkness.
Passing along Bimport Street he thought he heard the wheels of the coach departing, and, truly enough, when he reached the Duke's Arms in the Market Place the coach had gone.
It was impossible for him to get to the station on foot in time for this train, and he settled himself perforce to wait for the next—the last to Melchester that night.