"I do not thank you for that. I should hate it to be all smooth. Indeed,
I think I like you to desert me a little once now and then. Love is the
dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. O, it is a shame to
say so; but it is true!" She indulged in a little laugh. "My low spirits
begin at the very idea. Don't you offer me tame love, or away you go!"

"I wish Tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little woman," said
Wildeve, "so that I could be faithful to you without injuring a worthy
person. It is I who am the sinner after all; I am not worth the little
finger of either of you."

"But you must not sacrifice yourself to her from any sense of justice,"
replied Eustacia quickly. "If you do not love her it is the most
merciful thing in the long run to leave her as she is. That's always
the best way. There, now I have been unwomanly, I suppose. When you have
left me I am always angry with myself for things that I have said to
you."

Wildeve walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. The
pause was filled up by the intonation of a pollard thorn a little way to
windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as through
a strainer. It was as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth.

She continued, half sorrowfully, "Since meeting you last, it has
occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not for love of me you
did not marry her. Tell me, Damon--I'll try to bear it. Had I nothing
whatever to do with the matter?"

"Do you press me to tell?"