HE KAINE DIATHEKE
* * * * * *
Jude had to leave early next morning for his usual week of absence at
lodgings; and it was with a sense of futility that he threw into his
basket upon his tools and other necessaries the unread book he had
brought with him.
He kept his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself.
Arabella, on the contrary, made them public among all her friends
and acquaintance.
Retracing by the light of dawn the road he had followed a few hours
earlier under cover of darkness, with his sweetheart by his side, he
reached the bottom of the hill, where he walked slowly, and stood
still. He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss. As
the sun had only just risen it was possible that nobody had passed
there since. Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked
closely, and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of
their feet as they had stood locked in each other's arms. She was
not there now, and "the embroidery of imagination upon the stuff of
nature" so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart
which nothing could fill. A pollard willow stood close to the place,
and that willow was different from all other willows in the world.
Utter annihilation of the six days which must elapse before he could
see her again as he had promised would have been his intensest wish
if he had had only the week to live.
An hour and a half later Arabella came along the same way with her
two companions of the Saturday. She passed unheedingly the scene of
the kiss, and the willow that marked it, though chattering freely on
the subject to the other two.
"And what did he tell 'ee next?"
"Then he said--" And she related almost word for word some of his
tenderest speeches. If Jude had been behind the fence he would have
felt not a little surprised at learning how very few of his sayings
and doings on the previous evening were private.
"You've got him to care for 'ee a bit, 'nation if you han't!"
murmured Anny judicially. "It's well to be you!"
In a few moments Arabella replied in a curiously low, hungry tone of
latent sensuousness: "I've got him to care for me: yes! But I want
him to more than care for me; I want him to have me--to marry me! I
must have him. I can't do without him. He's the sort of man I long
for. I shall go mad if I can't give myself to him altogether! I
felt I should when I first saw him!"