`A special Providence, I suppose, helped it on its way.'

`Ah - it isn't true!' she said with gentle resentment. `You are teasing me - that's all - because you think I am not happy!'

`I don't know. I don't wish to know.'

`If I were unhappy it would be my fault, my wickedness; not that I should have a right to dislike him! He is considerate to me in everything; and he is very interesting, from the amount of general knowledge he has acquired by reading everything that comes in his way.... Do you think, Jude, that a man ought to marry a woman his own age, or one younger than himself - eighteen years - as I am than he?'

`It depends upon what they feel for each other.'

He gave her no opportunity of self-satisfaction, and she had to go on unaided, which she did in a vanquished tone, verging on tears:

`I - I think I must be equally honest with you as you have been with me. Perhaps you have seen what it is I want to say? - that though I like Mr. Phillotson as a friend, I don't like him - it is a torture to me to - live with him as a husband! - There, now I have let it out - I couldn't help it, although I have been - pretending I am happy. - Now you'll have a contempt for me for ever, I suppose!' She bent down her face upon her hands as they lay upon the cloth, and silently sobbed in little jerks that made the fragile three-legged table quiver.

`I have only been married a month or two!' she went on, still remaining bent upon the table, and sobbing into her hands. `And it is said that what a woman shrinks from - in the early days of her marriage - she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a dozen years. But that is much like saying that the amputation of a limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time!'

Jude could hardly speak, but he said, `I thought there was something wrong, Sue! Oh, I thought there was!'

`But it is not as you think! - there is nothing wrong except my own wickedness, I suppose you'd call it - a repugnance on my part, for a reason I cannot disclose, and what would not be admitted as one by the world in general! ... What tortures me so much is the necessity of being responsive to this man whenever he wishes, good as he is morally! - the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness! ... I wish he would beat me, or be faithless to me, or do some open thing that I could talk about as a justification for feeling as I do! But he does nothing, except that he has grown a little cold since he has found out how I feel. That's why he didn't come to the funeral.... Oh, I am very miserable - I don't know what to do! ... Don't come near me, Jude, because you mustn't. Don't - don't!'

But he had jumped up and put his face against hers - or rather against her ear, her face being inaccessible.

`I told you not to, Jude!'

`I know you did - I only wish to - console you! It all arose through my being married before we met, didn't it? You would have been my wife, Sue, wouldn't you, if it hadn't been for that?'

Instead of replying she rose quickly, and saying she was going to walk to her aunt's grave in the churchyard to recover herself, went out of the house. Jude did not follow her. Twenty minutes later he saw her cross the village green towards Mrs. Edlin's, and soon she sent a little girl to fetch her bag, and tell him she was too tired to see him again that night.