Far from the Madding Crowd

"What have you to say as your reason?" she asked her bitter voice being strangely low -- quite that of another woman now.

"I have to say that I have been a bad, black-hearted man." he answered.

less than she."

"Ah! don't taunt me, madam. This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be. If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have He turned to Fanny then. "But never mind, darling, wife!"

At these words there arose from Bathsheba's lips a long, low cry of measureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had never before been heard within those old-inhabited walls. It was the product* of her union with Troy.

"If she's -- that, -- what -- am I?" she added, as a continuation of the same cry, and sobbing pitifully: and the rarity with her of such abandonment only made the condition more dire.

"You are nothing to me -- nothing." said Troy, heartlessly. "A ceremony before a priest doesn't make a marriage. I am not morally yours."

A vehement impulse to flee from him, to run from this place, hide, and escape his words at any price, not stopping short of death itself, mastered Bathsheba now.

She waited not an instant, but turned to the door and ran out.