They moved on a dozen paces, and she showed herself recovered. It
was distracting to Jude, and his heart would have ached less had she
appeared anyhow but as she did appear; essentially large-minded and
generous on reflection, despite a previous exercise of those narrow
womanly humours on impulse that were necessary to give her sex.
"I don't blame you for what you couldn't help," she said, smiling.
"How should I be so foolish? I do blame you a little bit for not
telling me before. But, after all, it doesn't matter. We should
have had to keep apart, you see, even if this had not been in your
life."
"No, we shouldn't, Sue! This is the only obstacle."
"You forget that I must have loved you, and wanted to be your
wife, even if there had been no obstacle," said Sue, with a gentle
seriousness which did not reveal her mind. "And then we are cousins,
and it is bad for cousins to marry. And--I am engaged to somebody
else. As to our going on together as we were going, in a sort of
friendly way, the people round us would have made it unable to
continue. Their views of the relations of man and woman are limited,
as is proved by their expelling me from the school. Their philosophy
only recognizes relations based on animal desire. The wide field
of strong attachment where desire plays, at least, only a secondary
part, is ignored by them--the part of--who is it?--Venus Urania."
Her being able to talk learnedly showed that she was mistress of
herself again; and before they parted she had almost regained her
vivacious glance, her reciprocity of tone, her gay manner, and her
second-thought attitude of critical largeness towards others of her
age and sex.
He could speak more freely now. "There were several reasons against
my telling you rashly. One was what I have said; another, that
it was always impressed upon me that I ought not to marry--that
I belonged to an odd and peculiar family--the wrong breed for
marriage."
"Ah--who used to say that to you?"
"My great-aunt. She said it always ended badly with us Fawleys."
"That's strange. My father used to say the same to me!"
They stood possessed by the same thought, ugly enough, even as an
assumption: that a union between them, had such been possible, would
have meant a terrible intensification of unfitness--two bitters in
one dish.
"Oh, but there can't be anything in it!" she said with nervous
lightness. "Our family have been unlucky of late years in choosing
mates--that's all."