Jude the Obsure

"You must go in now!"

In a moment of impulse she bent over the sill, and laid her face upon

his hair, weeping, and then imprinting a scarcely perceptible little

kiss upon the top of his head, withdrawing quickly, so that he could

not put his arms round her, as otherwise he unquestionably would have

done. She shut the casement, and he returned to his cottage.

III

Sue's distressful confession recurred to Jude's mind all the night as

being a sorrow indeed.

The morning after, when it was time for her to go, the neighbours saw

her companion and herself disappearing on foot down the hill path

which led into the lonely road to Alfredston. An hour passed before

he returned along the same route, and in his face there was a look of

exaltation not unmixed with recklessness. An incident had occurred.

They had stood parting in the silent highway, and their tense and

passionate moods had led to bewildered inquiries of each other on how

far their intimacy ought to go; till they had almost quarrelled, and

she said tearfully that it was hardly proper of him as a parson in

embryo to think of such a thing as kissing her even in farewell as he

now wished to do. Then she had conceded that the fact of the kiss

would be nothing: all would depend upon the spirit of it. If given

in the spirit of a cousin and a friend she saw no objection: if in

the spirit of a lover she could not permit it. "Will you swear that

it will not be in that spirit?" she had said.

No: he would not. And then they had turned from each other in

estrangement, and gone their several ways, till at a distance

of twenty or thirty yards both had looked round simultaneously.

That look behind was fatal to the reserve hitherto more or less

maintained. They had quickly run back, and met, and embracing most

unpremeditatedly, kissed close and long. When they parted for good

it was with flushed cheeks on her side, and a beating heart on his.

The kiss was a turning-point in Jude's career. Back again in the

cottage, and left to reflection, he saw one thing: that though

his kiss of that aerial being had seemed the purest moment of his

faultful life, as long as he nourished this unlicensed tenderness it

was glaringly inconsistent for him to pursue the idea of becoming the

soldier and servant of a religion in which sexual love was regarded

as at its best a frailty, and at its worst damnation. What Sue

had said in warmth was really the cold truth. When to defend

his affection tooth and nail, to persist with headlong force in

impassioned attentions to her, was all he thought of, he was

condemned _ipso facto_ as a professor of the accepted school of

morals. He was as unfit, obviously, by nature, as he had been by

social position, to fill the part of a propounder of accredited

dogma.