They walked along a few more steps till they were outside the building and she had returned the key.'Can this be the girl,'said Jude when she came back,feeling a slight renewal of elasticity now that he was in the open street;'can this be the girl who brought the pagan deities into this most Christian city?-who mimicked Miss Fontover when she crushed them with her heel?-quoted Gibbon,and Shelley,and Mill?Where are dear Apollo,and dear Venus now!'
'Oh don't,don't be so cruel to me,Jude,and I so unhappy!'she sobbed.'I can't bear it!I was in error -I cannot reason with you.Iwas wrong -proud in my own conceit!Arabella's coming was the finish.
Don't satirize me:it cuts like a knife!'
He flung his arms round her and kissed her passionately there in the silent street,before she could hinder him.They went on till they came to a little coffee-house.'Jude,'she said with suppressed tears,'would you mind getting a lodging here?'
'I will -if,if you really wish?But do you?Let me go to our door and understand you.'
He went and conducted her in.She said she wanted no supper,and went in the dark upstairs and struck a light.Turning she found that Jude had followed her,and was standing at the chamber door.She went to him,put her hand in his,and said 'Good-night.'
'But Sue!Don't we live here?'
'You said you would do as I wished!'
'Yes.Very well!...Perhaps it was wrong of me to argue distastefully as I have done!Perhaps as we couldn't conscientiously marry at first in the old-fashioned way,we ought to have parted.Perhaps the world is not illuminated enough for such experiments as ours!Who were we,to think we could act as pioneers!'
'I am so glad you see that much,at any rate.I never deliberately meant to do as I did.I slipped into my false position through jealousy and agitation!'
'But surely through love -you loved me?'
'Yes.But I wanted to let it stop there,and go on always as mere lovers;until --'
'But people in love couldn't live for ever like that!'
'Women could:men can't,because they -won't.An average woman is in this superior to an average man -that she never instigates,only responds.We ought to have lived in mental communion,and no more.'
'I was the unhappy cause of the change,as I have said before!
...Well,as you will!...But human nature can't help being itself.'
'Oh yes -that's just what it has to learn -self-mastery.'
'I repeat -if either were to blame it was not you but I.'
'No -it was I.Your wickedness was only the natural man's desire to possess the woman.Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy stimulated me to oust Arabella.I had thought I ought in charity to let you approach me -that it was damnably selfish to torture you as I did my other friend.
But I shouldn't have given way if you hadn't broken me down by ****** me fear you would go back to her....But don't let us say any more about it!
Jude,will you leave me to myself now?'
'Yes....But Sue -my wife,as you are!'he burst out;'my old reproach to you was,after all,a true one.You have never loved me as I love you -never -never!Yours is not a passionate heart -your heart does not burn in a flame!You are,upon the whole,a sort of fay,or sprite -not a woman!'
'At first I did not love you,Jude;that I own.When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me.I did not exactly flirt with you;but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion -the craving to attract and captivate,regardless of the injury it may do the man -was in me;and when I found I had caught you,I was frightened.And then -I don't know how it was -I couldn't bear to let you go -possibly to Arabella again -and so I got to love you,Jude.But you see,however fondly it ended,it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.'
'And now you add to your cruelty by leaving me!'
'Ah -yes!The further I flounder,the more harm I do!'
'O Sue!'said he with a sudden sense of his own danger.'Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons!You have been my social salvation.
Stay with me for humanity's sake!You know what a weak fellow I am.My two arch-enemies you know -my weakness for womankind and my impulse to strong liquor.Don't abandon me to them,Sue,to save your own soul only!
They have been kept entirely at a distance since you became my guardian-angel!
Since I have had you I have been able to go into any temptations of the sort,without risk.Isn't my safety worth a little sacrifice of dogmatic principle?I am in terror lest,if you leave me,it will be with me another case of the pig that was washed turning back to his wallowing in the mire!'
Sue burst out weeping.'Oh,but you must not,Jude!You won't!
I'll pray for you night and day!'
'Well -never mind;don't grieve,'said Jude generously.'I did suffer,God knows,about you at that time;and now I suffer again.But perhaps not so much as you.The woman mostly gets the worst of it in the long run!'
'She does.'
'Unless she is absolutely worthless and contemptible.And this one is not that,anyhow!'
Sue drew a nervous breath or two.'She is -I fear!...Now Jude -good-night,-please!'
'I mustn't stay?-Not just once more?As it has been so many times -O Sue,my wife,why not!'
'No -no -not wife!...I am in your hands,Jude -don't tempt me back now I have advanced so far!'
'Very well.I do your bidding.I owe that to you,darling,in penance for how I overruled it at the first time.My God,how selfish Iwas!Perhaps -perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and purest loves that ever existed between man and woman!...Then let the veil of our temple be rent in two from this hour!'
He went to the bed,removed one of the pair of pillows thereon,and flung it to the floor.
Sue looked at him,and bending over the bed-rail wept silently.
'You don't see that it is a matter of conscience with me,and not of dislike to you!'she brokenly murmured.'Dislike to you!But I can't say any more -it breaks my heart -it will be undoing all I have begun!Jude -good-night!'
'Good-night,'he said,and turned to go.
