`Yes - I do. I shall not keep you long.'

Jude was too much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was now such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed to have left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.

`I want to tell you,' she presently said, her voice now quick, now slow, `so that you may not hear of it by chance. I am going back to Richard. He has - so magnanimously - agreed to forgive all.'

`Going back? How can you go - - '

`He is going to marry me again. That is for form's sake, and to satisfy the world, which does not see things as they are. But of course I am his wife already. Nothing has changed that.'

He turned upon her with an anguish that was well-nigh fierce.

`But you are my wife! Yes, you are. You know it. I have always regretted that feint of ours in going away and pretending to come back legally married, to save appearances. I loved you, and you loved me; and we closed with each other; and that made the marriage. We still love - you as well as I - know it, Sue! Therefore our marriage is not cancelled.'

`Yes; I know how you see it,' she answered with despairing self-suppression. `But I am going to marry him again, as it would be called by you. Strictly speaking you, too - don't mind my saying it, Jude! - you should take back - Arabella.'

`I should? Good God - what next! But how if you and I had married legally, as we were on the point of doing?'

`I should have felt just the same - that ours was not a marriage. And I would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if he asked me. But `the world and its ways have a certain worth' (I suppose): therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony.... Don't crush all the life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you! I was strongest once, I know, and perhaps I treated you cruelly. But Jude, return good for evil! I am the weaker now. Don't retaliate upon me, but be kind. Oh be kind to me - a poor wicked woman who is trying to mend!'

He shook his head hopelessly, his eyes wet. The blow of her bereavement seemed to have destroyed her reasoning faculty. The once keen vision was dimmed. `All wrong, all wrong!' he said huskily. `Error - perversity! It drives me out of my senses. Do you care for him? Do you love him? You know you don't! It will be a fanatic prostitution - God forgive me, yes - that's what it will be!'

`I don't love him - I must, must, own it, in deepest remorse! But I shall try to learn to love him by obeying him.'

Jude argued, urged, implored; but her conviction was proof against all. It seemed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm, and that her firmness in this had left her tottering in every other impulse and wish she possessed.

`I have been considerate enough to let you know the whole truth, and to tell it you myself,' she said in cut tones; `that you might not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not think you would be so rough with me for doing so! I was going to ask you ...'

`To give you away?'

`No. To send - my boxes to me - if you would. But I suppose you won't.'


  By PanEris using Melati.

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