'O yes! I am sure that--'
'Well, I hope so. But wait a minute. You don't know. To begin at
the beginning. Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one
of the eternally lost for my doctrines, I am of course, a believer in
good morals, Tess, as much as you. I used to wish to be a teacher of
men, and it was a great disappointment to me when I found I could not
enter the Church. I admired spotlessness, even though I could lay no
claim to it, and hated impurity, as I hope I do now. Whatever one
may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily subscribe to
these words of Paul: 'Be thou an example--in word, in conversation,
in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.' It is the only
safeguard for us poor human beings. '_Integer vitae_,' says a Roman
poet, who is strange company for St Paul--
'The man of upright life, from frailties free,
Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow.
'Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions, and having felt
all that so strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred
in me when, in the midst of my fine aims for other people, I myself
fell.'
He then told her of that time of his life to which allusion has been
made when, tossed about by doubts and difficulties in London, like a
cork on the waves, he plunged into eight-and-forty hours' dissipation
with a stranger.
'Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my folly,' he
continued. 'I would have no more to say to her, and I came home. I
have never repeated the offence. But I felt I should like to treat
you with perfect frankness and honour, and I could not do so without
telling this. Do you forgive me?'
She pressed his hand tightly for an answer.
'Then we will dismiss it at once and for ever!--too painful as it is
for the occasion--and talk of something lighter.'
'O, Angel--I am almost glad--because now YOU can forgive ME! I have
not made my confession. I have a confession, too--remember, I said
so.'
'Ah, to be sure! Now then for it, wicked little one.'
'Perhaps, although you smile, it is as serious as yours, or more so.'
'It can hardly be more serious, dearest.'
'It cannot--O no, it cannot!' She jumped up joyfully at the hope.
'No, it cannot be more serious, certainly,' she cried, 'because 'tis
just the same! I will tell you now.'
She sat down again.
Their hands were still joined. The ashes under the grate were lit
by the fire vertically, like a torrid waste. Imagination might have
beheld a Last Day luridness in this red-coaled glow, which fell on
his face and hand, and on hers, peering into the loose hair about her
brow, and firing the delicate skin underneath. A large shadow of her
shape rose upon the wall and ceiling. She bent forward, at which
each diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad's; and
pressing her forehead against his temple she entered on her story of
her acquaintance with Alec d'Urberville and its results, murmuring
