It was a peaceful February day, of wonderful softness for the time,
and one would almost have thought that winter was over. She had
hardly finished her dinner when d'Urberville's figure darkened the
window of the cottage wherein she was a lodger, which she had all to
herself to-day. Tess jumped up, but her visitor had knocked at the door, and she
could hardly in reason run away. D'Urberville's knock, his walk up
to the door, had some indescribable quality of difference from his
air when she last saw him. They seemed to be acts of which the doer
was ashamed. She thought that she would not open the door; but, as
there was no sense in that either, she arose, and having lifted the
latch stepped back quickly. He came in, saw her, and flung himself
down into a chair before speaking.
"Tess--I couldn't help it!" he began desperately, as he wiped his
heated face, which had also a superimposed flush of excitement. "I
felt that I must call at least to ask how you are. I assure you I
had not been thinking of you at all till I saw you that Sunday; now I
cannot get rid of your image, try how I may! It is hard that a good
woman should do harm to a bad man; yet so it is. If you would only
pray for me, Tess!" The suppressed discontent of his manner was almost pitiable, and yet
Tess did not pity him. "How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am forbidden to believe
that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my
account?"
"You really think that?"
"Yes. I have been cured of the presumption of thinking otherwise."
"Cured? By whom?"
"By my husband, if I must tell."
"Ah--your husband--your husband! How strange it seems! I remember
you hinted something of the sort the other day. What do you really
believe in these matters, Tess?" he asked. "You seem to have no
religion--perhaps owing to me."
"But I have. Though I don't believe in anything supernatural."
D'Urberville looked at her with misgiving. "Then do you think that the line I take is all wrong?"
"A good deal of it." "H'm--and yet I've felt so sure about it," he said uneasily.
"I believe in the SPIRIT of the Sermon on the Mount, and so did my
dear husband... But I don't believe--" Here she gave her negations