One day she was led by an accident into an oddly confidential dialogue with Gabriel about her difficulty. It afforded her a little relief - of a dull and cheerless kind. They were auditing accounts, and something occurred in the course of their labours which led Oak to say, speaking of Boldwood, `He'll never forget you, ma'am, never.

Then out came her trouble before she was aware; and she told him how she had again got into the toils; what Boldwood had asked her, and how he was expecting her assent. `The most mournful reason of all for my agreeing to it,' she said sadly, `and the true reason why I think to do so for good or for evil, is this - it is a thing I have not breathed to a living soul as yet - I believe that if I don't give my word, he'll go out of his mind.'

`Really, do ye?' said Gabriel, gravely.

`I believe this,' she continued, with reckless frankness; `and Heaven knows I say it in a spirit the very reverse of vain, for I am grieved and troubled to my soul about it - I believe I hold that man's future in my hand. His career depends entirely upon my treatment of him. O Gabriel, I tremble at my responsibility, for it is terrible.'

`Well, I think this much, ma'am, as I told you years ago,' said Oak, `that his life is a total blank whenever he isn't hoping for 'ee; but I can't suppose - I hope that nothing so dreadful hangs on to it as you fancy. His natural manner has always been dark and strange, you know. But since the case is so sad and odd-like, why don't ye give the conditional promise? I think I would.'

`But is it right? Some rash acts of my past life have taught me that a watched woman must have very much circumspection to retain only a very little credit, and I do want and long to be discreet in this! And six years - why we may all be in our graves by that time, even if Mr Troy does not come back again, which he may not impossibly do! Such thoughts give a sort of absurdity to the scheme. Now, isn't it preposterous, Gabriel? However he came to dream of it, I cannot think. But is it wrong? You know - you are older than I.'

`Eight years older, ma'am.'

`Yes, eight years - and is it wrong?'

`Perhaps it would be an uncommon agreement for a man and woman to make: I don't see anything really wrong about it,' said Oak, slowly. `In fact the very thing that makes it doubtful if you ought to marry en under any condition, that is, your not caring about him - for I may suppose--'

`Yes, you may suppose that love is wanting,' she said shortly. `love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me - for him or any one else.'

`Well, your want of love seems to me the one thing that takes away harm from such an agreement with him. If wild heat had to do wi' it, making ye long to overcome the awkwardness about your husband's vanishing, it mid be wrong; but a cold-hearted agreement to oblige a man seems different, somehow. The real sin, ma'am in my mind, lies in thinking of ever wedding wi' a man you don't love honest and true.'

`That I'm willing to pay the penalty of,' said Bathsheba, firmly. `You know, Gabriel, this is what I cannot get off my conscience - that I once seriously injured him in sheer idleness. If I had never played a trick upon him, he would never have wanted to marry me. O if I could only pay some heavy damages in money to him for the harm I did, and so get the sin off my soul that way! Well, there's the debt, which can only be discharged in one way, and I believe I am bound to do it if it honestly lies in my power, without any consideration of my own future at all. When a rake gambles away his expectations, the fact that it is an inconvenient debt doesn't make him the less liable. I've ben a rake, and the single point I ask you is, considering that my own scruples, and the fact that in the eye of the law my husband is only