It was bad policy to recall her--he knew it while he pursued it.
But he could not help it. She came back.
"Sue," he murmured, "do you wish to make it up, and stay? I'll
forgive you and condone everything!"
"Oh you can't, you can't!" she said hastily. "You can't condone it
now!"
"HE is your husband now, in effect, you mean, of course?"
"You may assume it. He is obtaining a divorce from his wife
Arabella."
"His wife! It is altogether news to me that he has a wife."
"It was a bad marriage."
"Like yours."
"Like mine. He is not doing it so much on his own account as on
hers. She wrote and told him it would be a kindness to her, since
then she could marry and live respectably. And Jude has agreed."
"A wife... A kindness to her. Ah, yes; a kindness to her to release
her altogether... But I don't like the sound of it. I can forgive,
Sue."
"No, no! You can't have me back now I have been so wicked--as to do
what I have done!"
There had arisen in Sue's face that incipient fright which showed
itself whenever he changed from friend to husband, and which made her
adopt any line of defence against marital feeling in him. "I MUST go
now. I'll come again--may I?"
"I don't ask you to go, even now. I ask you to stay."
"I thank you, Richard; but I must. As you are not so ill as I
thought, I CANNOT stay!"
"She's his--his from lips to heel!" said Phillotson; but so faintly
that in closing the door she did not hear it. The dread of a
reactionary change in the schoolmaster's sentiments, coupled,
perhaps, with a faint shamefacedness at letting even him know
what a slipshod lack of thoroughness, from a man's point of view,
characterized her transferred allegiance, prevented her telling him
of her, thus far, incomplete relations with Jude; and Phillotson lay
writhing like a man in hell as he pictured the prettily dressed,
maddening compound of sympathy and averseness who bore his name,
returning impatiently to the home of her lover.
Gillingham was so interested in Phillotson's affairs, and so
seriously concerned about him, that he walked up the hill-side to
Shaston two or three times a week, although, there and back, it was
a journey of nine miles, which had to be performed between tea and
supper, after a hard day's work in school. When he called on the
next occasion after Sue's visit his friend was downstairs, and
Gillingham noticed that his restless mood had been supplanted by a
more fixed and composed one.