don't actually believe what you pretend to, and only are indulging in the luxury of the emotion raised by an affected belief?'

`Luxury! How can you be so cruel!'

`You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your scorn of convention gone? I would have died game!'

`You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!' She turned off quickly.

`I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are not worth a man's love!'

Her bosom began to go up and down. `I can't endure you to say that!' she burst out, and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back impulsively. `Don't, don't scorn me! Kiss me, oh kiss me lots of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug - I can't bear it!' She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his, continued: `I must tell you - oh I must - my darling Love! It has been - only a church marriage - an apparent marriage I mean! He suggested it at the very first!'

`How?'

`I mean it is a nominal marriage only. It hasn't been more than that at all since I came back to him!'

`Sue!' he said. Pressing her to him in his arms he bruised her lips with kisses: `If misery can know happiness, I have a moment's happiness now! Now, in the name of all you hold holy, tell me the truth, and no lie. You do love me still?'

`I do! You know it too well! ... But I mustn't do this! I mustn't kiss you back as I would!'

`But do!'

`And yet you are so dear! - and you look so ill - - '

`And so do you! There's one more, in memory of our dead little children - yours and mine!'

The words struck her like a blow, and she bent her head. `I mustn't - I can't go on with this!' she gasped presently. `But there, there, darling; I give you back your kisses; I do, I do! ... And now I'll hate myself for ever for my sin!'

`No - let me make my last appeal. Listen to this! We've both remarried out of our senses. I was made drunk to do it. You were the same. I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Either form of intoxication takes away the nobler vision.... Let us then shake off our mistakes, and run away together!'

`No; again no! ... Why do you tempt me so far, Jude! It is too merciless! ... But I've got over myself now. Don't follow me - don't look at me. Leave me, for pity's sake!'

She ran up the church to the east end, and Jude did as she requested. He did not turn his head, but took up his blanket, which she had not seen, and went straight out. As he passed the end of the church she heard his coughs mingling with the rain on the windows, and in a last instinct of human affection, even now unsubdued by her fetters, she sprang up as if to go and succour him. But she knelt down again, and stopped her ears with her hands till all possible sound of him had passed away.

He was by this time at the corner of the green, from which the path ran across the fields in which he had scared rooks as a boy. He turned and looked back, once, at the building which still contained Sue; and then went on, knowing that his eyes would light on that scene no more.