Jude the Obsure

HE KAINE DIATHEKE

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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!"