"You will not marry me, Tess, and make me a self-respecting man?" he
repeated, as soon as they were over the furrows. "I cannot."
"But why?" "You know I have no affection for you."
"But you would get to feel that in time, perhaps--as soon as you
really could forgive me?"
"Never!"
"Why so positive?"
"I love somebody else." The words seemed to astonish him.
"You do?" he cried. "Somebody else? But has not a sense of what is
morally right and proper any weight with you?"
"No, no, no--don't say that!"
"Anyhow, then, your love for this other man may be only a passing
feeling which you will overcome--"
"No--no." "Yes, yes! Why not?" "I cannot tell you."
"You must in honour!"
"Well then ... I have married him."
"Ah!" he exclaimed; and he stopped dead and gazed at
her. "I did not wish to tell--I did not mean to!" she pleaded. "It is a
secret here, or at any rate but dimly known. So will you, PLEASE
will you, keep from questioning me? You must remember that we are
now strangers."
"Strangers--are we? Strangers!" For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face; but he
determinedly chastened it down.
"Is that man your husband?" he asked mechanically, denoting by a sign
the labourer who turned the machine. "That man!" she said proudly. "I should think not!" "Who, then?"
"Do not ask what I do not wish to tell!" she begged, and flashed her
appeal to him from her upturned face and lash-shadowed eyes.
D'Urberville was disturbed. "But I only asked for your sake!" he retorted hotly. "Angels of
heaven!--God forgive me for such an expression--I came here, I swear,
as I thought for your good. Tess--don't look at me so--I cannot
stand your looks! There never were such eyes, surely, before
Christianity or since! There--I won't lose my head; I dare not.
I own that the sight of you had waked up my love for you, which, I
believed, was extinguished with all such feelings. But I thought
that our marriage might be a sanctification for us both. 'The
unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving
wife is sanctified by the husband,' I said to myself. But my plan
is dashed from me; and I must bear the disappointment!"