Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded
to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness.
Having seen that it was really her lover who had
advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she
sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something
very like an ecstatic cry.
He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting
mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience’
sake.
“Forgive me, Tess dear!” he whispered.
“I ought to have asked. I—did
not know what I was doing. I do not mean it as
a liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy, dearest,
in all sincerity!”
Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled;
and seeing two people crouching under her where, by
immemorial custom, there should have been only one,
lifted her hind leg crossly.
“She is angry—she doesn’t know
what we mean—she’ll kick over the
milk!” exclaimed Tess, gently striving to free
herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped’s
actions, her heart more deeply concerned with herself
and Clare.
She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together,
his arm still encircling her. Tess’s eyes,
fixed on distance, began to fill.
“Why do you cry, my darling?” he said.
“O—I don’t know!” she
murmured.
As she saw and felt more clearly the position she
was in she became agitated and tried to withdraw.
“Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at
last,” said he, with a curious sigh of desperation,
signifying unconsciously that his heart had outrun
his judgement. “That I—love
you dearly and truly I need not say. But I—it
shall go no further now—it distresses you—I
am as surprised as you are. You will not think
I have presumed upon your defencelessness—been
too quick and unreflecting, will you?”
“N’—I can’t tell.”
He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute
or two the milking of each was resumed. Nobody
had beheld the gravitation of the two into one; and
when the dairyman came round by that screened nook
a few minutes later, there was not a sign to reveal
that the markedly sundered pair were more to each
other than mere acquaintance. Yet in the interval
since Crick’s last view of them something had
occurred which changed the pivot of the universe for
their two natures; something which, had he known its
quality, the dairyman would have despised, as a practical
man; yet which was based upon a more stubborn and
resistless tendency than a whole heap of so-called
practicalities. A veil had been whisked aside;
the tract of each one’s outlook was to have
a new horizon thenceforward—for a short
time or for a long.
Phase the Fourth: The Consequence
Clare, restless, went out into the dusk when evening
drew on, she who had won him having retired to her
chamber.
