"They are talking about us, no doubt!" moaned Sue. "'We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men!'"
Jude listened—"No—they are not talking of us," he said. "They are two clergymen of different views, arguing about the eastward position. Good God—the eastward position, and all creation groaning!"
Then another silence, till she was seized with another uncontrollable fit of grief. "There is something external to us which says, 'You shan't!' First it said, 'You shan't learn!' Then it said, 'You shan't labour!' Now it says, 'You shan't love!'"
He tried to soothe her by saying, "That's bitter of you, darling."
"But it's true!"
Thus they waited, and she went back again to her room. The baby's frock, shoes, and socks, which had been lying on a chair at the time of his death, she would not now have removed, though Jude would fain have got them out of her sight. But whenever he touched them she implored him to let them lie, and burst out almost savagely at the woman of the house when she also attempted to put them away.
Jude dreaded her dull apathetic silences almost more than her paroxysms. "Why don't you speak to me, Jude?" she cried out, after one of these. "Don't turn away from me! I can't bear the loneliness of being out of your looks!"
"There, dear; here I am," he said, putting his face close to hers.
"Yes… Oh, my comrade, our perfect union—our two-in-oneness—is now stained with blood!"
"Shadowed by death—that's all."