"Luxury! How can you be so cruel!"
"You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human
intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your
scorn of convention gone? I WOULD have died game!"
"You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!" She turned
off quickly.
"I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the
strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are
not worth a man's love!"
Her bosom began to go up and down. "I can't endure you to say that!"
she burst out, and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back
impulsively. "Don't, don't scorn me! Kiss me, oh kiss me lots
of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug--I
can't bear it!" She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his,
continued: "I must tell you--oh I must--my darling Love! It has
been--only a church marriage--an apparent marriage I mean! He
suggested it at the very first!"
"How?"
"I mean it is a nominal marriage only. It hasn't been more than that
at all since I came back to him!"
"Sue!" he said. Pressing her to him in his arms he bruised her
lips with kisses: "If misery can know happiness, I have a moment's
happiness now! Now, in the name of all you hold holy, tell me the
truth, and no lie. You do love me still?"
"I do! You know it too well! ... But I MUSTN'T do this! I mustn't
kiss you back as I would!"
"But do!"
"And yet you are so dear!--and you look so ill--"
"And so do you! There's one more, in memory of our dead little
children--yours and mine!"
The words struck her like a blow, and she bent her head. "I
MUSTN'T--I CAN'T go on with this!" she gasped presently. "But there,
there, darling; I give you back your kisses; I do, I do! ... And now
I'll HATE myself for ever for my sin!"
"No--let me make my last appeal. Listen to this! We've both
remarried out of our senses. I was made drunk to do it. You were
the same. I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Either form of
intoxication takes away the nobler vision... Let us then shake off
our mistakes, and run away together!"
"No; again no! ... Why do you tempt me so far, Jude! It is too
merciless! ... But I've got over myself now. Don't follow me--don't
look at me. Leave me, for pity's sake!"