Jude the Obsure

Meanwhile Sue, after parting from him earlier in the day, had gone

along to the station, with tears in her eyes for having run back and

let him kiss her. Jude ought not to have pretended that he was not a

lover, and made her give way to an impulse to act unconventionally,

if not wrongly. She was inclined to call it the latter; for Sue's

logic was extraordinarily compounded, and seemed to maintain that

before a thing was done it might be right to do, but that being done

it became wrong; or, in other words, that things which were right in

theory were wrong in practice.

"I have been too weak, I think!" she jerked out as she pranced on,

shaking down tear-drops now and then. "It was burning, like a

lover's--oh, it was! And I won't write to him any more, or at least

for a long time, to impress him with my dignity! And I hope it will

hurt him very much--expecting a letter to-morrow morning, and the

next, and the next, and no letter coming. He'll suffer then with

suspense--won't he, that's all!--and I am very glad of it!"--Tears

of pity for Jude's approaching sufferings at her hands mingled with

those which had surged up in pity for herself.

Then the slim little wife of a husband whose person was disagreeable

to her, the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by

temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial

relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man, walked

fitfully along, and panted, and brought weariness into her eyes by

gazing and worrying hopelessly.

Phillotson met her at the arrival station, and, seeing that she was

troubled, thought it must be owing to the depressing effect of her

aunt's death and funeral. He began telling her of his day's doings,

and how his friend Gillingham, a neighbouring schoolmaster whom he

had not seen for years, had called upon him. While ascending to the

town, seated on the top of the omnibus beside him, she said suddenly

and with an air of self-chastisement, regarding the white road and

its bordering bushes of hazel: "Richard--I let Mr. Fawley hold my hand a long while. I don't know

whether you think it wrong?"

He, waking apparently from thoughts of far different mould, said

vaguely, "Oh, did you? What did you do that for?"

"I don't know. He wanted to, and I let him."

"I hope it pleased him. I should think it was hardly a novelty."

They lapsed into silence. Had this been a case in the court of an

omniscient judge, he might have entered on his notes the curious fact

that Sue had placed the minor for the major indiscretion, and had not

said a word about the kiss.