“Very well. I do your bidding. I owe that to you, darling, in penance for how I overruled it at the first time. My God, how selfish I was! Perhaps—perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and purest loves that ever existed between man and woman! … Then let the veil of our temple be rent in two from this hour!”
He went to the bed, removed one of the pair of pillows thereon, and flung it to the floor.
Sue looked at him, and bending over the bed-rail wept silently. “You don’t see that it is a matter of conscience with me, and not of dislike to you!” she brokenly murmured. “Dislike to you! But I can’t say any more—it breaks my heart—it will be undoing all I have begun! Jude—good-night!”
“Good-night,” he said, and turned to go.
“Oh but you shall kiss me!” said she, starting up. “I can’t—bear—!”
He clasped her, and kissed her weeping face as he had scarcely ever done before, and they remained in silence till she said, “Good-bye, good-bye!” And then gently pressing him away she got free, trying to mitigate the sadness by saying: “We’ll be dear friends just the same, Jude, won’t we? And we’ll see each other sometimes—yes!—and forget all this, and try to be as we were long ago?”
Jude did not permit himself to speak, but turned and descended the stairs.
IV
The man whom Sue, in her mental volte-face, was now regarding as her inseparable husband, lived still at Marygreen.
On the day before the tragedy of the children, Phillotson had seen both her and Jude as they stood in the rain at Christminster watching the procession to the theatre. But he had said nothing of it at the moment to his companion Gillingham, who, being an old friend, was staying with him at the village aforesaid, and had, indeed, suggested the day’s trip to Christminster.