"He's a good fellow, isn't he!" she said with latent tears. On
reconsideration she added, "He was very resigned to letting me
go--too resigned almost! I never was so near being in love with him
as when he made such thoughtful arrangements for my being comfortable
on my journey, and offering to provide money. Yet I was not. If I
loved him ever so little as a wife, I'd go back to him even now."
"But you don't, do you?"
"It is true--oh so terribly true!--I don't."
"Nor me neither, I half-fear!" he said pettishly. "Nor anybody
perhaps! Sue, sometimes, when I am vexed with you, I think you are
incapable of real love."
"That's not good and loyal of you!" she said, and drawing away from
him as far as she could, looked severely out into the darkness. She
added in hurt tones, without turning round: "My liking for you is
not as some women's perhaps. But it is a delight in being with you,
of a supremely delicate kind, and I don't want to go further and risk
it by--an attempt to intensify it! I quite realized that, as woman
with man, it was a risk to come. But, as me with you, I resolved to
trust you to set my wishes above your gratification. Don't discuss
it further, dear Jude!"
"Of course, if it would make you reproach yourself... but you do
like me very much, Sue? Say you do! Say that you do a quarter, a
tenth, as much as I do you, and I'll be content!"
"I've let you kiss me, and that tells enough."
"Just once or so!"
"Well--don't be a greedy boy."
He leant back, and did not look at her for a long time. That
episode in her past history of which she had told him--of the poor
Christminster graduate whom she had handled thus, returned to Jude's
mind; and he saw himself as a possible second in such a torturing
destiny.
"This is a queer elopement!" he murmured. "Perhaps you are making
a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it
almost seems so--to see you sitting up there so prim!"
"Now you mustn't be angry--I won't let you!" she coaxed, turning and
moving nearer to him. "You did kiss me just now, you know; and I
didn't dislike you to, I own it, Jude. Only I don't want to let you
do it again, just yet--considering how we are circumstanced, don't
you see!"