like a babble of waves, and surged up to her eyes. She put her hand
in his, and thus they went on, to a place where the reflected sun
glared up from the river, under a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow
that dazzled their eyes, though the sun itself was hidden by the
bridge. They stood still, whereupon little furred and feathered
heads popped up from the smooth surface of the water; but, finding
that the disturbing presences had paused, and not passed by, they
disappeared again. Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog
began to close round them--which was very early in the evening at
this time of the year--settling on the lashes of her eyes, where it
rested like crystals, and on his brows and hair.
They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark. Some of the
dairy-people, who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening
after their engagement, heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to
fragments, though they were too far off to hear the words discoursed;
noted the spasmodic catch in her remarks, broken into syllables by
the leapings of her heart, as she walked leaning on his arm; her
contented pauses, the occasional little laugh upon which her soul
seemed to ride--the laugh of a woman in company with the man she
loves and has won from all other women--unlike anything else in
nature. They marked the buoyancy of her tread, like the skim of a
bird which has not quite alighted.
Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being;
it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness
of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would
persist in their attempts to touch her--doubt, fear, moodiness, care,
shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the
circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them
in hungry subjection there.
A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual
remembrance. She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the
background those shapes of darkness were always spread. They might
be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little
every day.
One evening Tess and Clare were obliged to sit indoors keeping house,
all the other occupants of the domicile being away. As they talked
she looked thoughtfully up at him, and met his two appreciative eyes.
'I am not worthy of you--no, I am not!' she burst out, jumping up
from her low stool as though appalled at his homage, and the fulness
of her own joy thereat.
Clare, deeming the whole basis of her excitement to be that which was
only the smaller part of it, said--
'I won't have you speak like it, dear Tess! Distinction does not
consist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but
in being numbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and
pure, and lovely, and of good report--as you are, my Tess.'
She struggled with the sob in her throat. How often had that string
of excellences made her young heart ache in church of late years, and
how strange that he should have cited them now.
'Why didn't you stay and love me when I--was sixteen; living with my
