“O Tess—you are too, too—childish—unformed—crude, I suppose! I don’t know what you are. You don’t understand the law—you don’t understand!”
“What—you cannot?”
“Indeed I cannot.”
A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener’s face.
“I thought—I thought,” she whispered. “O, now I see how wicked I seem to you! Believe me—believe me, on my soul, I never thought but that you could! I hoped you would not; yet I believed, without a doubt, that you could cast me off if you were determined, and didn’t love me at—at—all!”
“You were mistaken,” he said.
“O, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last night! But I hadn’t the courage. That’s just like me!”
“The courage to do what?”
As she did not answer he took her by the hand.
“What were you thinking of doing?” he inquired.