Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with a conscience.  Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living her precious life—­a life which, to herself who endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest to himself.  Upon her sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her.  The universe itself only came into being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which she was born.

This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic First Cause—­her all; her every and only chance.  How then should he look upon her as of less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness with the affection which he knew that he had awakened in her—­so fervid and so impressionable as she was under her reserve—­in order that it might not agonize and wreck her?

To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would be to develop what had begun.  Living in such close relations, to meet meant to fall into endearment; flesh and blood could not resist it; and, having arrived at no conclusion as to the issue of such a tendency, he decided to hold aloof for the present from occupations in which they would be mutually engaged.  As yet the harm done was small.

But it was not easy to carry out the resolution never to approach her.  He was driven towards her by every heave of his pulse.

He thought he would go and see his friends.  It might be possible to sound them upon this.  In less than five months his term here would have ended, and after a few additional months spent upon other farms he would be fully equipped in agricultural knowledge and in a position to start on his own account.  Would not a farmer want a wife, and should a farmer’s wife be a drawing-room wax-figure, or a woman who understood farming?  Notwithstanding the pleasing answer returned to him by the silence, he resolved to go his journey.

One morning when they sat down to breakfast at Talbothays Dairy some maid observed that she had not seen anything of Mr Clare that day.

“O no,” said Dairyman Crick.  “Mr Clare has gone hwome to Emminster to spend a few days wi’ his kinsfolk.”

For four impassioned ones around that table the sunshine of the morning went out at a stroke, and the birds muffled their song.  But neither girl by word or gesture revealed her blankness.  “He’s getting on towards the end of his time wi’ me,” added the dairyman, with a phlegm which unconsciously was brutal; “and so I suppose he is beginning to see about his plans elsewhere.”

“How much longer is he to bide here?” asked Izz Huett, the only one of the gloom-stricken bevy who could trust her voice with the question.

The others waited for the dairyman’s answer as if their lives hung upon it; Retty, with parted lips, gazing on the tablecloth, Marian with heat added to her redness, Tess throbbing and looking out at the meads.