Suddenly she said, "Jude!"
"Yes. All right. How do you feel now?"
"Better. Quite well. Why, I fell asleep, didn't I? What time is
it? Not late surely?"
"It is past ten."
"Is it really? What SHALL I do!" she said, starting up.
"Stay where you are."
"Yes; that's what I want to do. But I don't know what they would
say! And what will you do?"
"I am going to sit here by the fire all night, and read. To-morrow
is Sunday, and I haven't to go out anywhere. Perhaps you will be
saved a severe illness by resting there. Don't be frightened. I'm
all right. Look here, what I have got for you. Some supper."
When she had sat upright she breathed plaintively and said, "I do
feel rather weak still. I thought I was well; and I ought not to be
here, ought I?" But the supper fortified her somewhat, and when she
had had some tea and had lain back again she was bright and cheerful.
The tea must have been green, or too long drawn, for she seemed
preternaturally wakeful afterwards, though Jude, who had not taken
any, began to feel heavy; till her conversation fixed his attention.
"You called me a creature of civilization, or something, didn't you?"
she said, breaking a silence. "It was very odd you should have done
that."
"Why?"
"Well, because it is provokingly wrong. I am a sort of negation of
it."
"You are very philosophical. 'A negation' is profound talking."
"Is it? Do I strike you as being learned?" she asked, with a touch
of raillery.
"No--not learned. Only you don't talk quite like a girl--well, a
girl who has had no advantages."
"I have had advantages. I don't know Latin and Greek, though I know
the grammars of those tongues. But I know most of the Greek and
Latin classics through translations, and other books too. I read
Lempriere, Catullus, Martial, Juvenal, Lucian, Beaumont and Fletcher,
Boccaccio, Scarron, De Brantome, Sterne, De Foe, Smollett, Fielding,
Shakespeare, the Bible, and other such; and found that all interest
in the unwholesome part of those books ended with its mystery."
"You have read more than I," he said with a sigh. "How came you to
read some of those queerer ones?"
"Well," she said thoughtfully, "it was by accident. My life has been
entirely shaped by what people call a peculiarity in me. I have no
fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one
or two of them particularly--almost as one of their own sex. I mean
I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel--to be on
their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man--no
man short of a sensual savage--will molest a woman by day or night,
at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look
'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look
it, he never comes. However, what I was going to say is that when I
was eighteen I formed a friendly intimacy with an undergraduate at
Christminster, and he taught me a great deal, and lent me books which
I should never have got hold of otherwise."