prompt:
Chapter: The man whom Sue, in her mental _volte-face_, was now regarding as
her inseparable husband, lived still at Marygreen.

On the day before the tragedy of the children, Phillotson had seen
both her and Jude as they stood in the rain at Christminster watching
the procession to the theatre.  But he had said nothing of it at the
moment to his companion Gillingham, who, being an old friend, was
staying with him at the village aforesaid, and had, indeed, suggested
the day's trip to Christminster.

"What are you thinking of?" said Gillingham, as they went home.  "The
university degree you never obtained?"

"No, no," said Phillotson gruffly.  "Of somebody I saw to-day."  In a
moment he added, "Susanna."

"I saw her, too."

"You said nothing."

"I didn't wish to draw your attention to her.  But, as you did see
her, you should have said: 'How d'ye do, my dear-that-was?'"

"Ah, well.  I might have.  But what do you think of this: I have good
reason for supposing that she was innocent when I divorced her--that
I was all wrong.  Yes, indeed!  Awkward, isn't it?"

"She has taken care to set you right since, anyhow, apparently."

"H'm. That's a cheap sneer.  I ought to have waited, unquestionably."

At the end of the week, when Gillingham had gone back to his school
near Shaston, Phillotson, as was his custom, went to Alfredston
market; ruminating again on Arabella's intelligence as he walked down
the long hill which he had known before Jude knew it, though his
history had not beaten so intensely upon its incline.  Arrived in
the town he bought his usual weekly local paper; and when he had sat
down in an inn to refresh himself for the five miles' walk back, he
pulled the paper from his pocket and read awhile.  The account of the
"strange suicide of a stone-mason's children" met his eye.

Unimpassioned as he was, it impressed him painfully, and puzzled him
not a little, for he could not understand the age of the elder child
being what it was stated to be.  However, there was no doubt that the
newspaper report was in some way true.

"Their cup of sorrow is now full!" he said: and thought and thought
of Sue, and what she had gained by leaving him.

Arabella having made her home at Alfredston, and the schoolmaster
coming to market there every Saturday, it was not wonderful that in
a few weeks they met again--the precise time being just after her
return from Christminster, where she had stayed much longer than she
had at first intended, keeping an interested eye on Jude, though Jude
had seen no more of her.  Phillotson was on his way homeward when he
encountered Arabella, and she was approaching the town.

"You like walking out this way, Mrs. Cartlett?" he said.

"I've just begun to again," she replied.  "It is where I lived
as maid and wife, and all the past things of my life that are
interesting to my feelings are mixed up with this road.  And they
have been stirred up in me too, lately; for I've been visiting at
Christminster.  Yes; I've seen Jude."

"Ah!  How do they bear their terrible affliction?"

"In a ve-ry strange way--ve-ry strange!  She don't live with him any
longer.  I only heard of it as a certainty just before I left; though
I had thought things were drifting that way from their manner when I
called on them."

"Not live with her husband?  Why, I should have thought 'twould have
united them more."

"He's not her husband, after all.  She has never really married him
although they have passed as man and wife so long.  And now, instead
of this sad event making 'em hurry up, and get the thing done
legally, she's took in a queer religious way, just as I was in my
affliction at losing Cartlett, only hers is of a more 'sterical sort
than mine.  And she says, so I was told, that she's your wife in the
eye of Heaven and the Church--yours only; and can't be anybody else's
by any act of man."

"Ah--indeed? ...  Separated, have they!"

"You see, the eldest boy was mine--"

"Oh--yours!"

"Yes, poor little fellow--born in lawful wedlock, thank God.  And
perhaps she feels, over and above other things, that I ought to have
been in her place.  I can't say.  However, as for me, I am soon off
from here.  I've got Father to look after now, and we can't live in
such a hum-drum place as this.  I hope soon to be in a bar again at
Christminster, or some other big town."

They parted.  When Phillotson had ascended the hill a few steps he
stopped, hastened back, and called her.

"What is, or was, their address?"

Arabella gave it.

"Thank you.  Good afternoon."

Arabella smiled grimly as she resumed her way, and practised
dimple-making all along the road from where the pollard willows begin
to the old almshouses in the first street of the town.

Meanwhile Phillotson ascended to Marygreen, and for the first time
during a lengthened period he lived with a forward eye.  On crossing
under the large trees of the green to the humble schoolhouse to which
he had been reduced he stood a moment, and pictured Sue coming out of
the door to meet him.  No man had ever suffered more inconvenience
from his own charity, Christian or heathen, than Phillotson had done
in letting Sue go.  He had been knocked about from pillar to post at
the hands of the virtuous almost beyond endurance; he had been nearly
starved, and was now dependent entirely upon the very small stipend
from the school of this village (where the parson had got ill-spoken
of for befriending him). He had often thought of Arabella's remarks
that he should have been more severe with Sue, that her recalcitrant
spirit would soon have been broken.  Yet such was his obstinate and
illogical disregard of opinion, and of the principles in which he had
been trained, that his convictions on the rightness of his course
with his wife had not been disturbed.

Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction were
liable to the same catastrophe in another.  The instincts which had
allowed him to give Sue her liberty now enabled him to regard her
as none the worse for her life with Jude.  He wished for her still,
in his curious way, if he did not love her, and, apart from policy,
soon felt that he would be gratified to have her again as his, always
provided that she came willingly.

But artifice was necessary, he had found, for stemming the cold and
inhumane blast of the world's contempt.  And here were the materials
ready made.  By getting Sue back and remarrying her on the
respectable plea of having entertained erroneous views of her, and
gained his divorce wrongfully, he might acquire some comfort, resume
his old courses, perhaps return to the Shaston school, if not even to
the Church as a licentiate.

He thought he would write to Gillingham to inquire his views, and
what he thought of his, Phillotson's, sending a letter to her.
Gillingham replied, naturally, that now she was gone it were best to
let her be, and considered that if she were anybody's wife she was
the wife of the man to whom she had borne three children and owed
such tragical adventures.  Probably, as his attachment to her seemed
unusually strong, the singular pair would make their union legal in
course of time, and all would be well, and decent, and in order.

"But they won't--Sue won't!" exclaimed Phillotson to himself.
"Gillingham is so matter of fact.  She's affected by Christminster
sentiment and teaching.  I can see her views on the indissolubility
of marriage well enough, and I know where she got them.  They are not
mine; but I shall make use of them to further mine."

He wrote a brief reply to Gillingham.  "I know I am entirely wrong,
but I don't agree with you.  As to her having lived with and had
three children by him, my feeling is (though I can advance no logical
or moral defence of it, on the old lines) that it has done little
more than finish her education.  I shall write to her, and learn
whether what that woman said is true or no."

As he had made up his mind to do this before he had written to his
friend, there had not been much reason for writing to the latter at
all.  However, it was Phillotson's way to act thus.

He accordingly addressed a carefully considered epistle to Sue, and,
knowing her emotional temperament, threw a Rhadamanthine strictness
into the lines here and there, carefully hiding his heterodox
feelings, not to frighten her.  He stated that, it having come to his
knowledge that her views had considerably changed, he felt compelled
to say that his own, too, were largely modified by events subsequent
to their parting.  He would not conceal from her that passionate
love had little to do with his communication.  It arose from a wish
to make their lives, if not a success, at least no such disastrous
failure as they threatened to become, through his acting on what
he had considered at the time a principle of justice, charity, and
reason.

To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and
right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old
civilization like ours.  It was necessary to act under an acquired
and cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average
share of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving kindness take
care of itself.

He suggested that she should come to him there at Marygreen.

On second thoughts he took out the last paragraph but one; and having
rewritten the letter he dispatched it immediately, and in some
excitement awaited the issue.

A few days after a figure moved through the white fog which enveloped
the Beersheba suburb of Christminster, towards the quarter in which
Jude Fawley had taken up his lodging since his division from Sue.  A
timid knock sounded upon the door of his abode.

It was evening--so he was at home; and by a species of divination he
jumped up and rushed to the door himself.

"Will you come out with me?  I would rather not come in.  I want
to--to talk with you--and to go with you to the cemetery."

It had been in the trembling accents of Sue that these words came.
Jude put on his hat.  "It is dreary for you to be out," he said.
"But if you prefer not to come in, I don't mind."

"Yes--I do.  I shall not keep you long."

Jude was too much affected to go on talking at first; she, too, was
now such a mere cluster of nerves that all initiatory power seemed
to have left her, and they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic
shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.

"I want to tell you," she presently said, her voice now quick, now
slow, "so that you may not hear of it by chance.  I am going back to
Richard.  He has--so magnanimously--agreed to forgive all."

"Going back?  How can you go--"

"He is going to marry me again.  That is for form's sake, and to
satisfy the world, which does not see things as they are.  But of
course I AM his wife already.  Nothing has changed that."

He turned upon her with an anguish that was well-nigh fierce.

"But you are MY wife!  Yes, you are.  You know it.  I have always
regretted that feint of ours in going away and pretending to come
back legally married, to save appearances.  I loved you, and you
loved me; and we closed with each other; and that made the marriage.
We still love--you as well as I--KNOW it, Sue!  Therefore our
marriage is not cancelled."

"Yes; I know how you see it," she answered with despairing
self-suppression.  "But I am going to marry him again, as it would
be called by you.  Strictly speaking you, too--don't mind my saying
it, Jude!--you should take back--Arabella."

"I should?  Good God--what next!  But how if you and I had married
legally, as we were on the point of doing?"

"I should have felt just the same--that ours was not a marriage.
And I would go back to Richard without repeating the sacrament, if
he asked me.  But 'the world and its ways have a certain worth' (I
suppose), therefore I concede a repetition of the ceremony...  Don't
crush all the life out of me by satire and argument, I implore you!
I was strongest once, I know, and perhaps I treated you cruelly.
But Jude, return good for evil!  I am the weaker now.  Don't
retaliate upon me, but be kind.  Oh be kind to me--a poor wicked
woman who is trying to mend!"

He shook his head hopelessly, his eyes wet.  The blow of her
bereavement seemed to have destroyed her reasoning faculty.  The once
keen vision was dimmed.  "All wrong, all wrong!" he said huskily.
"Error--perversity!  It drives me out of my senses.  Do you care for
him?  Do you love him?  You know you don't!  It will be a fanatic
prostitution--God forgive me, yes--that's what it will be!"

"I don't love him--I must, must, own it, in deepest remorse!  But I
shall try to learn to love him by obeying him."

Jude argued, urged, implored; but her conviction was proof against
all.  It seemed to be the one thing on earth on which she was firm,
and that her firmness in this had left her tottering in every other
impulse and wish she possessed.

"I have been considerate enough to let you know the whole truth,
and to tell it you myself," she said in cut tones; "that you might
not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand.  I
have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him.  I did not
think you would be so rough with me for doing so!  I was going to
ask you..."

"To give you away?"

"No.  To send--my boxes to me--if you would.  But I suppose you
won't."

"Why, of course I will.  What--isn't he coming to fetch you--to marry
you from here?  He won't condescend to do that?"

"No--I won't let him.  I go to him voluntarily, just as I went away
from him.  We are to be married at his little church at Marygreen."

She was so sadly sweet in what he called her wrong-headedness that
Jude could not help being moved to tears more than once for pity of
her.  "I never knew such a woman for doing impulsive penances, as
you, Sue!  No sooner does one expect you to go straight on, as the
one rational proceeding, than you double round the corner!"

"Ah, well; let that go! ...  Jude, I must say good-bye!  But I wanted
you to go to the cemetery with me.  Let our farewell be there--beside
the graves of those who died to bring home to me the error of my
views."

They turned in the direction of the place, and the gate was opened to
them on application.  Sue had been there often, and she knew the way
to the spot in the dark.  They reached it, and stood still.

"It is here--I should like to part," said she.

"So be it!"

"Don't think me hard because I have acted on conviction.  Your
generous devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude!  Your worldly failure,
if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame.
Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do
themselves no worldly good.  Every successful man is more or less a
selfish man.  The devoted fail...  'Charity seeketh not her own.'"

"In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we'll
part friends.  Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you
call religion has passed away!"

"Well--don't discuss it.  Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and
kindest friend!"

"Good-bye, my mistaken wife.  Good-bye!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Phillotson and his friend, Gillingham, had noticed Sue, Jude and the children in Christminster on Remembrance Day. One day at Alfredston, Phillotson reads about the death of the three children, and he is moved with compassion for Sue's woes. He meets Arabella again, and she tells him that the oldest child  was hers and Jude's. She also informs him that Jude and Sue had never married and that they are now separated. Arabella tells Phillotson that Sue still considers herself to be his wife. Assuming that the tragedy would have united Jude and Sue in their grief, Phillotson is astonished to hear Arabella's account. He now begins to hope for reconciliation with Sue on the grounds of her innocence at the time of the divorce. Although Gillingham advises against it, Phillotson writes to Sue and asks her to remarry him. Sue accepts this offer and one evening she goes to see Jude. They walk to the cemetery together. She tells him that she is returning to Marygreen to remarry Phillotson, as she still considers him her husband. She considers the death of the three children as a kind of warning to mend her ways. Jude is horrified at her decision, but Sue is adamant and will not listen to his protests. She even says he should return to Arabella.


prompt:
Chapter: The next afternoon the familiar Christminster fog still hung over all
things.  Sue's slim shape was only just discernible going towards the
station.

Jude had no heart to go to his work that day.  Neither could he go
anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass.
He went in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where
boughs dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had
never been before.

"Sue's gone from me--gone!" he murmured miserably.

She in the meantime had left by the train, and reached Alfredston
Road, where she entered the steam-tram and was conveyed into the
town.  It had been her request to Phillotson that he should not meet
her.  She wished, she said, to come to him voluntarily, to his very
house and hearthstone.

It was Friday evening, which had been chosen because the schoolmaster
was disengaged at four o'clock that day till the Monday morning
following.  The little car she hired at the Bear to drive her to
Marygreen set her down at the end of the lane, half a mile from the
village, by her desire, and preceded her to the schoolhouse with
such portion of her luggage as she had brought.  On its return she
encountered it, and asked the driver if he had found the master's
house open.  The man informed her that he had, and that her things
had been taken in by the schoolmaster himself.

She could now enter Marygreen without exciting much observation.
She crossed by the well and under the trees to the pretty new school
on the other side, and lifted the latch of the dwelling without
knocking.  Phillotson stood in the middle of the room, awaiting her,
as requested.

"I've come, Richard," said she, looking pale and shaken, and sinking
into a chair.  "I cannot believe--you forgive your--wife!"

"Everything, darling Susanna," said Phillotson.

She started at the endearment, though it had been spoken advisedly
without fervour.  Then she nerved herself again.

"My children--are dead--and it is right that they should be!  I am
glad--almost.  They were sin-begotten.  They were sacrificed to teach
me how to live!  Their death was the first stage of my purification.
That's why they have not died in vain! ...  You will take me back?"

He was so stirred by her pitiful words and tone that he did more than
he had meant to do.  He bent and kissed her cheek.

Sue imperceptibly shrank away, her flesh quivering under the touch of
his lips.

Phillotson's heart sank, for desire was renascent in him.  "You still
have an aversion to me!"

"Oh no, dear--I have been driving through the damp, and I was
chilly!" she said, with a hurried smile of apprehension.  "When are
we going to have the marriage?  Soon?"

"To-morrow morning, early, I thought--if you really wish.  I am
sending round to the vicar to let him know you are come.  I have told
him all, and he highly approves--he says it will bring our lives to
a triumphant and satisfactory issue.  But--are you sure of yourself?
It is not too late to refuse now if--you think you can't bring
yourself to it, you know?"

"Yes, yes, I can!  I want it done quick.  Tell him, tell him at once!
My strength is tried by the undertaking--I can't wait long!"

"Have something to eat and drink then, and go over to your room
at Mrs. Edlin's.  I'll tell the vicar half-past eight to-morrow,
before anybody is about--if that's not too soon for you?  My friend
Gillingham is here to help us in the ceremony.  He's been good enough
to come all the way from Shaston at great inconvenience to himself."

Unlike a woman in ordinary, whose eye is so keen for material things,
Sue seemed to see nothing of the room they were in, or any detail of
her environment.  But on moving across the parlour to put down her
muff she uttered a little "Oh!" and grew paler than before.  Her look
was that of the condemned criminal who catches sight of his coffin.

"What?" said Phillotson.

The flap of the bureau chanced to be open, and in placing her muff
upon it her eye had caught a document which lay there.  "Oh--only
a--funny surprise!" she said, trying to laugh away her cry as she
came back to the table.

"Ah!  Yes," said Phillotson.  "The licence.... It has just come."

Gillingham now joined them from his room above, and Sue nervously
made herself agreeable to him by talking on whatever she thought
likely to interest him, except herself, though that interested him
most of all.  She obediently ate some supper, and prepared to leave
for her lodging hard by.  Phillotson crossed the green with her,
bidding her good-night at Mrs. Edlin's door.

The old woman accompanied Sue to her temporary quarters, and helped
her to unpack.  Among other things she laid out a night-gown
tastefully embroidered.

"Oh--I didn't know THAT was put in!" said Sue quickly.  "I didn't
mean it to be.  Here is a different one."  She handed a new and
absolutely plain garment, of coarse and unbleached calico.

"But this is the prettiest," said Mrs. Edlin.  "That one is no better
than very sackcloth o' Scripture!"

"Yes--I meant it to be.  Give me the other."

She took it, and began rending it with all her might, the tears
resounding through the house like a screech-owl.

"But my dear, dear!--whatever...."

"It is adulterous!  It signifies what I don't feel--I bought it long
ago--to please Jude.  It must be destroyed!"

Mrs. Edlin lifted her hands, and Sue excitedly continued to tear the
linen into strips, laying the pieces in the fire.

"You med ha' give it to me!" said the widow.  "It do make my heart
ache to see such pretty open-work as that a-burned by the flames--not
that ornamental night-rails can be much use to a' ould 'ooman like I.
My days for such be all past and gone!"

"It is an accursed thing--it reminds me of what I want to forget!"
Sue repeated.  "It is only fit for the fire."

"Lord, you be too strict!  What do ye use such words for, and condemn
to hell your dear little innocent children that's lost to 'ee!  Upon
my life I don't call that religion!"

Sue flung her face upon the bed, sobbing.  "Oh, don't, don't!  That
kills me!"  She remained shaken with her grief, and slipped down upon
her knees.

"I'll tell 'ee what--you ought not to marry this man again!" said
Mrs. Edlin indignantly.  "You are in love wi' t' other still!"

"Yes I must--I am his already!"

"Pshoo!  You be t' other man's.  If you didn't like to commit
yourselves to the binding vow again, just at first, 'twas all the
more credit to your consciences, considering your reasons, and you
med ha' lived on, and made it all right at last.  After all, it
concerned nobody but your own two selves."

"Richard says he'll have me back, and I'm bound to go!  If he had
refused, it might not have been so much my duty to--give up Jude.
But--"  She remained with her face in the bed-clothes, and Mrs. Edlin
left the room.

Phillotson in the interval had gone back to his friend Gillingham,
who still sat over the supper-table.  They soon rose, and walked out
on the green to smoke awhile.  A light was burning in Sue's room, a
shadow moving now and then across the blind.

Gillingham had evidently been impressed with the indefinable charm of
Sue, and after a silence he said, "Well: you've all but got her again
at last.  She can't very well go a second time.  The pear has dropped
into your hand."

"Yes! ...  I suppose I am right in taking her at her word.  I confess
there seems a touch of selfishness in it.  Apart from her being what
she is, of course, a luxury for a fogey like me, it will set me right
in the eyes of the clergy and orthodox laity, who have never forgiven
me for letting her go.  So I may get back in some degree into my old
track."

"Well--if you've got any sound reason for marrying her again, do it
now in God's name!  I was always against your opening the cage-door
and letting the bird go in such an obviously suicidal way.  You might
have been a school inspector by this time, or a reverend, if you
hadn't been so weak about her."

"I did myself irreparable damage--I know it."

"Once you've got her housed again, stick to her."

Phillotson was more evasive to-night.  He did not care to admit
clearly that his taking Sue to him again had at bottom nothing to
do with repentance of letting her go, but was, primarily, a human
instinct flying in the face of custom and profession.  He said,
"Yes--I shall do that.  I know woman better now.  Whatever justice
there was in releasing her, there was little logic, for one holding
my views on other subjects."

Gillingham looked at him, and wondered whether it would ever happen
that the reactionary spirit induced by the world's sneers and his own
physical wishes would make Phillotson more orthodoxly cruel to her
than he had erstwhile been informally and perversely kind.

"I perceive it won't do to give way to impulse," Phillotson resumed,
feeling more and more every minute the necessity of acting up to his
position.  "I flew in the face of the Church's teaching; but I did it
without malice prepense.  Women are so strange in their influence
that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.  However, I know myself
better now.  A little judicious severity, perhaps..."

"Yes; but you must tighten the reins by degrees only.  Don't be too
strenuous at first.  She'll come to any terms in time."

The caution was unnecessary, though Phillotson did not say so.  "I
remember what my vicar at Shaston said, when I left after the row
that was made about my agreeing to her elopement.  'The only thing
you can do to retrieve your position and hers is to admit your error
in not restraining her with a wise and strong hand, and to get her
back again if she'll come, and be firm in the future.'  But I was
so headstrong at that time that I paid no heed.  And that after the
divorce she should have thought of doing so I did not dream."

The gate of Mrs. Edlin's cottage clicked, and somebody began crossing
in the direction of the school.  Phillotson said "Good-night."

"Oh, is that Mr. Phillotson," said Mrs. Edlin.  "I was going over
to see 'ee.  I've been upstairs with her, helping her to unpack her
things; and upon my word, sir, I don't think this ought to be!"

"What--the wedding?"

"Yes.  She's forcing herself to it, poor dear little thing; and
you've no notion what she's suffering.  I was never much for religion
nor against it, but it can't be right to let her do this, and you
ought to persuade her out of it.  Of course everybody will say it was
very good and forgiving of 'ee to take her to 'ee again.  But for my
part I don't."

"It's her wish, and I am willing," said Phillotson with grave
reserve, opposition making him illogically tenacious now.  "A great
piece of laxity will be rectified."

"I don't believe it.  She's his wife if anybody's.  She's had three
children by him, and he loves her dearly; and it's a wicked shame to
egg her on to this, poor little quivering thing!  She's got nobody
on her side.  The one man who'd be her friend the obstinate creature
won't allow to come near her.  What first put her into this mood o'
mind, I wonder!"

"I can't tell.  Not I certainly.  It is all voluntary on her part.
Now that's all I have to say."  Phillotson spoke stiffly.  "You've
turned round, Mrs. Edlin.  It is unseemly of you!"

"Well. I knowed you'd be affronted at what I had to say; but I don't
mind that.  The truth's the truth."

"I'm not affronted, Mrs. Edlin.  You've been too kind a neighbour
for that.  But I must be allowed to know what's best for myself and
Susanna.  I suppose you won't go to church with us, then?"

"No.  Be hanged if I can...  I don't know what the times be coming
to!  Matrimony have growed to be that serious in these days that one
really do feel afeard to move in it at all.  In my time we took it
more careless; and I don't know that we was any the worse for it!
When I and my poor man were jined in it we kept up the junketing all
the week, and drunk the parish dry, and had to borrow half a crown
to begin housekeeping!"

When Mrs. Edlin had gone back to her cottage Phillotson spoke
moodily.  "I don't know whether I ought to do it--at any rate quite
so rapidly."

"Why?"

"If she is really compelling herself to this against her
instincts--merely from this new sense of duty or religion--I ought
perhaps to let her wait a bit."

"Now you've got so far you ought not to back out of it.  That's my
opinion."

"I can't very well put it off now; that's true.  But I had a qualm
when she gave that little cry at sight of the licence."

"Now, never you have qualms, old boy.  I mean to give her away
to-morrow morning, and you mean to take her.  It has always been on
my conscience that I didn't urge more objections to your letting her
go, and now we've got to this stage I shan't be content if I don't
help you to set the matter right."

Phillotson nodded, and seeing how staunch his friend was, became
more frank.  "No doubt when it gets known what I've done I shall
be thought a soft fool by many.  But they don't know Sue as I do.
Though so elusive, hers is such an honest nature at bottom that I
don't think she has ever done anything against her conscience.  The
fact of her having lived with Fawley goes for nothing.  At the time
she left me for him she thought she was quite within her right.  Now
she thinks otherwise."

The next morning came, and the self-sacrifice of the woman on the
altar of what she was pleased to call her principles was acquiesced
in by these two friends, each from his own point of view.  Phillotson
went across to the Widow Edlin's to fetch Sue a few minutes after
eight o'clock.  The fog of the previous day or two on the low-lands
had travelled up here by now, and the trees on the green caught
armfuls, and turned them into showers of big drops.  The bride was
waiting, ready; bonnet and all on.  She had never in her life looked
so much like the lily her name connoted as she did in that pallid
morning light.  Chastened, world-weary, remorseful, the strain on her
nerves had preyed upon her flesh and bones, and she appeared smaller
in outline than she had formerly done, though Sue had not been a
large woman in her days of rudest health.

"Prompt," said the schoolmaster, magnanimously taking her hand.
But he checked his impulse to kiss her, remembering her start of
yesterday, which unpleasantly lingered in his mind.

Gillingham joined them, and they left the house, Widow Edlin
continuing steadfast in her refusal to assist in the ceremony.

"Where is the church?" said Sue.  She had not lived there for any
length of time since the old church was pulled down, and in her
preoccupation forgot the new one.

"Up here," said Phillotson; and presently the tower loomed large and
solemn in the fog.  The vicar had already crossed to the building,
and when they entered he said pleasantly: "We almost want candles."

"You do--wish me to be yours, Richard?" gasped Sue in a whisper.

"Certainly, dear; above all things in the world."

Sue said no more; and for the second or third time he felt he was not
quite following out the humane instinct which had induced him to let
her go.

There they stood, five altogether: the parson, the clerk, the couple,
and Gillingham; and the holy ordinance was resolemnized forthwith.
In the nave of the edifice were two or three villagers, and when the
clergyman came to the words, "What God hath joined," a woman's voice
from among these was heard to utter audibly:

"God hath jined indeed!"

It was like a re-enactment by the ghosts of their former selves of
the similar scene which had taken place at Melchester years before.
When the books were signed the vicar congratulated the husband
and wife on having performed a noble, and righteous, and mutually
forgiving act.  "All's well that ends well," he said smiling.
"May you long be happy together, after thus having been 'saved as by
fire.'"

They came down the nearly empty building, and crossed to the
schoolhouse.  Gillingham wanted to get home that night, and left
early.  He, too, congratulated the couple.  "Now," he said in parting
from Phillotson, who walked out a little way, "I shall be able to
tell the people in your native place a good round tale; and they'll
all say 'Well done,' depend on it."

When the schoolmaster got back Sue was making a pretence of doing
some housewifery as if she lived there.  But she seemed timid at his
approach, and compunction wrought on him at sight of it.

"Of course, my dear, I shan't expect to intrude upon your personal
privacy any more than I did before," he said gravely.  "It is for our
good socially to do this, and that's its justification, if it was not
my reason."  Sue brightened a little.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Sue arrives at Phillotson's house in Marygreen. When Phillotson welcomes her with a kiss, she shrinks in revulsion. And when she sees the marriage license, she recoils in fear, yet she is determined to go through with the marriage. Gillingham joins them for supper and Sue goes to Mrs. Edlin's place for the night. When a pretty, embroidered night gown is laid out for her, Sue tears it to pieces, saying it is an adulterous thing, since she had bought it to please Jude. Mrs. Edlin, who perceives that Sue is still in love with the other man , tells her that she should not marry Phillotson. Phillotson in the meantime is uncertain whether to go ahead with the wedding, which is to be the next day. He discusses the matter with Gillingham, who advises him to stick to his plan. Mrs. Edlin comes to tell Phillotson that Sue is forcing herself to marry him and that he should call off the wedding. But Phillotson claims that Sue is marrying him of her own will. However, he has doubts about whether he should give Sue more time, but Gillingham urges him on. The next morning Sue and Phillotson are remarried in the church; Gillingham gives Sue away, as Mr. Edlin has refused to assist. When they return home, Phillotson promises Sue that he will not intrude on her privacy. Their marriage will be in name only, for the purpose of gaining social acceptance. Sue is relieved by this offer.


prompt:
Chapter: The place was the door of Jude's lodging in the out-skirts of
Christminster--far from the precincts of St. Silas' where he had
formerly lived, which saddened him to sickness.  The rain was coming
down.  A woman in shabby black stood on the doorstep talking to Jude,
who held the door in his hand.

"I am lonely, destitute, and houseless--that's what I am!  Father has
turned me out of doors after borrowing every penny I'd got, to put it
into his business, and then accusing me of laziness when I was only
waiting for a situation.  I am at the mercy of the world!  If you
can't take me and help me, Jude, I must go to the workhouse, or to
something worse.  Only just now two undergraduates winked at me as I
came along.  'Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there's so
many young men!"

The woman in the rain who spoke thus was Arabella, the evening being
that of the day after Sue's remarriage with Phillotson.

"I am sorry for you, but I am only in lodgings," said Jude coldly.

"Then you turn me away?"

"I'll give you enough to get food and lodging for a few days."

"Oh, but can't you have the kindness to take me in?  I cannot endure
going to a public house to lodge; and I am so lonely.  Please, Jude,
for old times' sake!"

"No, no," said Jude hastily.  "I don't want to be reminded of those
things; and if you talk about them I shall not help you."

"Then I suppose I must go!" said Arabella.  She bent her head against
the doorpost and began sobbing.

"The house is full," said Jude.  "And I have only a little extra room
to my own--not much more than a closet--where I keep my tools, and
templates, and the few books I have left!"

"That would be a palace for me!"

"There is no bedstead in it."

"A bit of a bed could be made on the floor.  It would be good enough
for me."

Unable to be harsh with her, and not knowing what to do, Jude called
the man who let the lodgings, and said this was an acquaintance of
his in great distress for want of temporary shelter.

"You may remember me as barmaid at the Lamb and Flag formerly?" spoke
up Arabella.  "My father has insulted me this afternoon, and I've
left him, though without a penny!"

The householder said he could not recall her features.  "But still,
if you are a friend of Mr. Fawley's we'll do what we can for a day
or two--if he'll make himself answerable?"

"Yes, yes," said Jude.  "She has really taken me quite unawares; but
I should wish to help her out of her difficulty."  And an arrangement
was ultimately come to under which a bed was to be thrown down in
Jude's lumber-room, to make it comfortable for Arabella till she
could get out of the strait she was in--not by her own fault, as she
declared--and return to her father's again.

While they were waiting for this to be done Arabella said: "You know
the news, I suppose?"

"I guess what you mean; but I know nothing."

"I had a letter from Anny at Alfredston to-day. She had just heard
that the wedding was to be yesterday: but she didn't know if it had
come off."

"I don't wish to talk of it."

"No, no: of course you don't.  Only it shows what kind of woman--"

"Don't speak of her I say!  She's a fool!  And she's an angel, too,
poor dear!"

"If it's done, he'll have a chance of getting back to his old
position, by everybody's account, so Anny says.  All his well-wishers
will be pleased, including the bishop himself."

"Do spare me, Arabella."

Arabella was duly installed in the little attic, and at first she
did not come near Jude at all.  She went to and fro about her own
business, which, when they met for a moment on the stairs or in the
passage, she informed him was that of obtaining another place in
the occupation she understood best.  When Jude suggested London as
affording the most likely opening in the liquor trade, she shook her
head.  "No--the temptations are too many," she said. "Any humble
tavern in the country before that for me."

On the Sunday morning following, when he breakfasted later than on
other days, she meekly asked him if she might come in to breakfast
with him, as she had broken her teapot, and could not replace it
immediately, the shops being shut.

"Yes, if you like," he said indifferently.

While they sat without speaking she suddenly observed: "You seem all
in a brood, old man.  I'm sorry for you."

"I am all in a brood."

"It is about her, I know.  It's no business of mine, but I could find
out all about the wedding--if it really did take place--if you wanted
to know."

"How could you?"

"I wanted to go to Alfredston to get a few things I left there.  And
I could see Anny, who'll be sure to have heard all about it, as she
has friends at Marygreen."

Jude could not bear to acquiesce in this proposal; but his suspense
pitted itself against his discretion, and won in the struggle.  "You
can ask about it if you like," he said.  "I've not heard a sound from
there.  It must have been very private, if--they have married."

"I am afraid I haven't enough cash to take me there and back, or I
should have gone before.  I must wait till I have earned some."

"Oh--I can pay the journey for you," he said impatiently.  And thus
his suspense as to Sue's welfare, and the possible marriage, moved
him to dispatch for intelligence the last emissary he would have
thought of choosing deliberately.

Arabella went, Jude requesting her to be home not later than by
the seven o'clock train.  When she had gone he said: "Why should I
have charged her to be back by a particular time!  She's nothing to
me--nor the other neither!"

But having finished work he could not help going to the station to
meet Arabella, dragged thither by feverish haste to get the news
she might bring, and know the worst.  Arabella had made dimples
most successfully all the way home, and when she stepped out of the
railway carriage she smiled.  He merely said "Well?" with the very
reverse of a smile.

"They are married."

"Yes--of course they are!" he returned.  She observed, however, the
hard strain upon his lip as he spoke.

"Anny says she has heard from Belinda, her relation out at Marygreen,
that it was very sad, and curious!"

"How do you mean sad?  She wanted to marry him again, didn't she?
And he her!"

"Yes--that was it.  She wanted to in one sense, but not in the
other.  Mrs. Edlin was much upset by it all, and spoke out her mind
at Phillotson.  But Sue was that excited about it that she burnt her
best embroidery that she'd worn with you, to blot you out entirely.
Well--if a woman feels like it, she ought to do it.  I commend her
for it, though others don't."  Arabella sighed.  "She felt he was her
only husband, and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of
God A'mighty while he lived.  Perhaps another woman feels the same
about herself, too!"  Arabella sighed again.

"I don't want any cant!" exclaimed Jude.

"It isn't cant," said Arabella.  "I feel exactly the same as she!"

He closed that issue by remarking abruptly: "Well--now I know all I
wanted to know.  Many thanks for your information.  I am not going
back to my lodgings just yet."  And he left her straightway.

In his misery and depression Jude walked to well-nigh every spot
in the city that he had visited with Sue; thence he did not know
whither, and then thought of going home to his usual evening meal.
But having all the vices of his virtues, and some to spare, he turned
into a public house, for the first time during many months.  Among
the possible consequences of her marriage Sue had not dwelt on this.

Arabella, meanwhile, had gone back.  The evening passed, and Jude
did not return.  At half-past nine Arabella herself went out, first
proceeding to an outlying district near the river where her father
lived, and had opened a small and precarious pork-shop lately.

"Well," she said to him, "for all your rowing me that night, I've
called in, for I have something to tell you.  I think I shall get
married and settled again.  Only you must help me: and you can do
no less, after what I've stood 'ee."

"I'll do anything to get thee off my hands!"

"Very well.  I am now going to look for my young man.  He's on the
loose I'm afraid, and I must get him home.  All I want you to do
to-night is not to fasten the door, in case I should want to sleep
here, and should be late."

"I thought you'd soon get tired of giving yourself airs and keeping
away!"

"Well--don't do the door.  That's all I say."

She then sallied out again, and first hastening back to Jude's to
make sure that he had not returned, began her search for him.  A
shrewd guess as to his probable course took her straight to the
tavern which Jude had formerly frequented, and where she had been
barmaid for a brief term.  She had no sooner opened the door of the
"Private Bar" than her eyes fell upon him--sitting in the shade at
the back of the compartment, with his eyes fixed on the floor in a
blank stare.  He was drinking nothing stronger than ale just then.
He did not observe her, and she entered and sat beside him.

Jude looked up, and said without surprise: "You've come to have
something, Arabella? ...  I'm trying to forget her: that's all!  But
I can't; and I am going home."  She saw that he was a little way on
in liquor, but only a little as yet.

"I've come entirely to look for you, dear boy.  You are not well.
Now you must have something better than that."  Arabella held up her
finger to the barmaid.  "You shall have a liqueur--that's better fit
for a man of education than beer.  You shall have maraschino, or
curacao dry or sweet, or cherry brandy.  I'll treat you, poor chap!"

"I don't care which!  Say cherry brandy...  Sue has served me badly,
very badly.  I didn't expect it of Sue!  I stuck to her, and she
ought to have stuck to me.  I'd have sold my soul for her sake, but
she wouldn't risk hers a jot for me.  To save her own soul she lets
mine go damn! ...  But it isn't her fault, poor little girl--I am
sure it isn't!"

How Arabella had obtained money did not appear, but she ordered a
liqueur each, and paid for them.  When they had drunk these Arabella
suggested another; and Jude had the pleasure of being, as it were,
personally conducted through the varieties of spirituous delectation
by one who knew the landmarks well.  Arabella kept very considerably
in the rear of Jude; but though she only sipped where he drank, she
took as much as she could safely take without losing her head--which
was not a little, as the crimson upon her countenance showed.

Her tone towards him to-night was uniformly soothing and cajoling;
and whenever he said "I don't care what happens to me," a thing he
did continually, she replied, "But I do very much!"  The closing hour
came, and they were compelled to turn out; whereupon Arabella put her
arm round his waist, and guided his unsteady footsteps.

When they were in the streets she said: "I don't know what our
landlord will say to my bringing you home in this state.  I expect we
are fastened out, so that he'll have to come down and let us in."

"I don't know--I don't know."

"That's the worst of not having a home of your own.  I tell you,
Jude, what we had best do.  Come round to my father's--I made it up
with him a bit to-day.  I can let you in, and nobody will see you at
all; and by to-morrow morning you'll be all right."

"Anything--anywhere," replied Jude.  "What the devil does it matter
to me?"

They went along together, like any other fuddling couple, her arm
still round his waist, and his, at last, round hers; though with no
amatory intent; but merely because he was weary, unstable, and in
need of support.

"This--is th' Martyrs'--burning-place," he stammered as they
dragged across a broad street.  "I remember--in old Fuller's _Holy
State_--and I am reminded of it--by our passing by here--old Fuller
in his _Holy State_ says, that at the burning of Ridley, Doctor
Smith--preached sermon, and took as his text _'Though I give my body
to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.'_--Often
think of it as I pass here.  Ridley was a--"

"Yes.  Exactly.  Very thoughtful of you, deary, even though it hasn't
much to do with our present business."

"Why, yes it has!  I'm giving my body to be burned!  But--ah you
don't understand!--it wants Sue to understand such things!  And I
was her seducer--poor little girl!  And she's gone--and I don't care
about myself!  Do what you like with me! ...  And yet she did it for
conscience' sake, poor little Sue!"

"Hang her!--I mean, I think she was right," hiccuped Arabella.  "I've
my feelings too, like her; and I feel I belong to you in Heaven's
eye, and to nobody else, till death us do part!  It is--hic--never
too late--hic to mend!"

They had reached her father's house, and she softly unfastened the
door, groping about for a light within.

The circumstances were not altogether unlike those of their entry
into the cottage at Cresscombe, such a long time before.  Nor were
perhaps Arabella's motives.  But Jude did not think of that, though
she did.

"I can't find the matches, dear," she said when she had fastened up
the door.  "But never mind--this way.  As quiet as you can, please."

"It is as dark as pitch," said Jude.

"Give me your hand, and I'll lead you.  That's it.  Just sit down
here, and I'll pull off your boots.  I don't want to wake him."

"Who?"

"Father.  He'd make a row, perhaps."

She pulled off his boots.  "Now," she whispered, "take hold of
me--never mind your weight.  Now--first stair, second stair--"

"But--are we out in our old house by Marygreen?" asked the stupefied
Jude.  "I haven't been inside it for years till now!  Hey?  And where
are my books?  That's what I want to know?"

"We are at my house, dear, where there's nobody to spy out how ill
you are.  Now--third stair, fourth stair--that's it.  Now we shall
get on."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The next day in Christminster, Arabella arrives at Jude's doorstep saying she is destitute and homeless after quarrelling with her father. She begs Jude to take her in. Jude is initially reluctant, but ultimately he feels sorry for her, and he arranges with the landlord to have a bed provided for her. When she raises the issue of Sue's wedding, Jude becomes touchy. But Arabella persists and offers to get news of the wedding from Anny in Alfredston. Arabella leaves and returns with the news that Phillotson and Sue were married; she has even heard about the incident of Sue's burning a particular nightgown in an attempt to forget Jude. She also tells Jude that Sue has now resolved to accept Phillotson as her husband. Arabella declares the same feelings for Jude. Jude is miserable and depressed, and after visiting his old haunts, he goes into a tavern to drink. In the meantime Arabella patches up her quarrel with her father and arranges with him to leave the house open for herself and Jude. She goes to the tavern to find Jude, gets him to drink more, and then persuades him to come to her father's house. Jude is too drunk to know what he is doing.


prompt:
Chapter: Arabella was preparing breakfast in the downstairs back room of this
small, recently hired tenement of her father's.  She put her head
into the little pork-shop in front, and told Mr. Donn it was ready.
Donn, endeavouring to look like a master pork-butcher, in a greasy
blue blouse, and with a strap round his waist from which a steel
dangled, came in promptly.

"You must mind the shop this morning," he said casually.  "I've to
go and get some inwards and half a pig from Lumsdon, and to call
elsewhere.  If you live here you must put your shoulder to the wheel,
at least till I get the business started!"

"Well, for to-day I can't say."  She looked deedily into his face.
"I've got a prize upstairs."

"Oh?  What's that?"

"A husband--almost."

"No!"

"Yes.  It's Jude.  He's come back to me."

"Your old original one?  Well, I'm damned!"

"Well, I always did like him, that I will say."

"But how does he come to be up there?" said Donn, humour-struck, and
nodding to the ceiling.

"Don't ask inconvenient questions, Father.  What we've to do is to
keep him here till he and I are--as we were."

"How was that?"

"Married."

"Ah...  Well it is the rummest thing I ever heard of--marrying an
old husband again, and so much new blood in the world!  He's no
catch, to my thinking.  I'd have had a new one while I was about it."

"It isn't rum for a woman to want her old husband back for
respectability, though for a man to want his old wife back--well,
perhaps it is funny, rather!"  And Arabella was suddenly seized with
a fit of loud laughter, in which her father joined more moderately.

"Be civil to him, and I'll do the rest," she said when she had
recovered seriousness.  "He told me this morning that his head ached
fit to burst, and he hardly seemed to know where he was.  And no
wonder, considering how he mixed his drink last night.  We must keep
him jolly and cheerful here for a day or two, and not let him go back
to his lodging.  Whatever you advance I'll pay back to you again.
But I must go up and see how he is now, poor deary."

Arabella ascended the stairs, softly opened the door of the first
bedroom, and peeped in.  Finding that her shorn Samson was asleep
she entered to the bedside and stood regarding him.  The fevered
flush on his face from the debauch of the previous evening lessened
the fragility of his ordinary appearance, and his long lashes,
dark brows, and curly back hair and beard against the white pillow
completed the physiognomy of one whom Arabella, as a woman of rank
passions, still felt it worth while to recapture, highly important
to recapture as a woman straitened both in means and in reputation.
Her ardent gaze seemed to affect him; his quick breathing became
suspended, and he opened his eyes.

"How are you now, dear?" said she.  "It is I--Arabella."

"Ah!--where--oh yes, I remember!  You gave me shelter...  I am
stranded--ill--demoralized--damn bad!  That's what I am!"

"Then do stay here.  There's nobody in the house but father and me,
and you can rest till you are thoroughly well.  I'll tell them at
the stoneworks that you are knocked up."

"I wonder what they are thinking at the lodgings!"

"I'll go round and explain.  Perhaps you had better let me pay up, or
they'll think we've run away?"

"Yes.  You'll find enough money in my pocket there."

Quite indifferent, and shutting his eyes because he could not bear
the daylight in his throbbing eye-balls, Jude seemed to doze again.
Arabella took his purse, softly left the room, and putting on her
outdoor things went off to the lodgings she and he had quitted the
evening before.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed ere she reappeared round the
corner, walking beside a lad wheeling a truck on which were piled all
Jude's household possessions, and also the few of Arabella's things
which she had taken to the lodging for her short sojourn there.
Jude was in such physical pain from his unfortunate break-down of
the previous night, and in such mental pain from the loss of Sue and
from having yielded in his half-somnolent state to Arabella, that
when he saw his few chattels unpacked and standing before his eyes in
this strange bedroom, intermixed with woman's apparel, he scarcely
considered how they had come there, or what their coming signalized.

"Now," said Arabella to her father downstairs, "we must keep plenty
of good liquor going in the house these next few days.  I know his
nature, and if he once gets into that fearfully low state that he
does get into sometimes, he'll never do the honourable thing by me
in this world, and I shall be left in the lurch.  He must be kept
cheerful.  He has a little money in the savings bank, and he has
given me his purse to pay for anything necessary.  Well, that will
be the licence; for I must have that ready at hand, to catch him
the moment he's in the humour.  You must pay for the liquor.  A few
friends, and a quiet convivial party would be the thing, if we could
get it up.  It would advertise the shop, and help me too."

"That can be got up easy enough by anybody who'll afford victuals and
drink...  Well yes--it would advertise the shop--that's true."

Three days later, when Jude had recovered somewhat from the fearful
throbbing of his eyes and brain, but was still considerably confused
in his mind by what had been supplied to him by Arabella during
the interval--to keep him, jolly, as she expressed it--the quiet
convivial gathering, suggested by her, to wind Jude up to the
striking point, took place.

Donn had only just opened his miserable little pork and sausage
shop, which had as yet scarce any customers; nevertheless that party
advertised it well, and the Donns acquired a real notoriety among a
certain class in Christminster who knew not the colleges, nor their
works, nor their ways.  Jude was asked if he could suggest any guest
in addition to those named by Arabella and her father, and in a
saturnine humour of perfect recklessness mentioned Uncle Joe, and
Stagg, and the decayed auctioneer, and others whom he remembered as
having been frequenters of the well-known tavern during his bout
therein years before.  He also suggested Freckles and Bower o' Bliss.
Arabella took him at his word so far as the men went, but drew the
line at the ladies.

Another man they knew, Tinker Taylor, though he lived in the same
street, was not invited; but as he went homeward from a late job on
the evening of the party, he had occasion to call at the shop for
trotters.  There were none in, but he was promised some the next
morning.  While making his inquiry Taylor glanced into the back room,
and saw the guests sitting round, card-playing, and drinking, and
otherwise enjoying themselves at Donn's expense.  He went home to
bed, and on his way out next morning wondered how the party went
off.  He thought it hardly worth while to call at the shop for his
provisions at that hour, Donn and his daughter being probably not up,
if they caroused late the night before.  However, he found in passing
that the door was open, and he could hear voices within, though the
shutters of the meat-stall were not down.  He went and tapped at the
sitting-room door, and opened it.

"Well--to be sure!" he said, astonished.

Hosts and guests were sitting card-playing, smoking, and talking,
precisely as he had left them eleven hours earlier; the gas was
burning and the curtains drawn, though it had been broad daylight
for two hours out of doors.

"Yes!" cried Arabella, laughing.  "Here we are, just the same.  We
ought to be ashamed of ourselves, oughtn't we?  But it is a sort of
housewarming, you see; and our friends are in no hurry.  Come in, Mr.
Taylor, and sit down."

The tinker, or rather reduced ironmonger, was nothing loath, and
entered and took a seat.  "I shall lose a quarter, but never mind,"
he said.  "Well, really, I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked
in!  It seemed as if I was flung back again into last night, all of a
sudden."

"So you are.  Pour out for Mr. Taylor."

He now perceived that she was sitting beside Jude, her arm being
round his waist.  Jude, like the rest of the company, bore on his
face the signs of how deeply he had been indulging.

"Well, we've been waiting for certain legal hours to arrive, to
tell the truth," she continued bashfully, and making her spirituous
crimson look as much like a maiden blush as possible.  "Jude and I
have decided to make up matters between us by tying the knot again,
as we find we can't do without one another after all.  So, as a
bright notion, we agreed to sit on till it was late enough, and go
and do it off-hand."

Jude seemed to pay no great heed to what she was announcing, or
indeed to anything whatever.  The entrance of Taylor infused fresh
spirit into the company, and they remained sitting, till Arabella
whispered to her father: "Now we may as well go."

"But the parson don't know?"

"Yes, I told him last night that we might come between eight and
nine, as there were reasons of decency for doing it as early and
quiet as possible; on account of it being our second marriage, which
might make people curious to look on if they knew.  He highly
approved."

"Oh very well, I'm ready," said her father, getting up and shaking
himself.

"Now, old darling," she said to Jude.  "Come along, as you promised."

"When did I promise anything?" asked he, whom she had made so tipsy
by her special knowledge of that line of business as almost to have
made him sober again--or to seem so to those who did not know him.

"Why!" said Arabella, affecting dismay.  "You've promised to marry me
several times as we've sat here to-night. These gentlemen have heard
you."

"I don't remember it," said Jude doggedly.  "There's only one
woman--but I won't mention her in this Capharnaum!"

Arabella looked towards her father.  "Now, Mr. Fawley be honourable,"
said Donn.  "You and my daughter have been living here together these
three or four days, quite on the understanding that you were going to
marry her.  Of course I shouldn't have had such goings on in my house
if I hadn't understood that.  As a point of honour you must do it
now."

"Don't say anything against my honour!" enjoined Jude hotly,
standing up.  "I'd marry the W---- of Babylon rather than do
anything dishonourable!  No reflection on you, my dear.  It is a
mere rhetorical figure--what they call in the books, hyperbole."

"Keep your figures for your debts to friends who shelter you," said
Donn.

"If I am bound in honour to marry her--as I suppose I am--though
how I came to be here with her I know no more than a dead man--marry
her I will, so help me God!  I have never behaved dishonourably to
a woman or to any living thing.  I am not a man who wants to save
himself at the expense of the weaker among us!"

"There--never mind him, deary," said she, putting her cheek against
Jude's.  "Come up and wash your face, and just put yourself tidy, and
off we'll go.  Make it up with Father."

They shook hands.  Jude went upstairs with her, and soon came down
looking tidy and calm.  Arabella, too, had hastily arranged herself,
and accompanied by Donn away they went.

"Don't go," she said to the guests at parting.  "I've told the little
maid to get the breakfast while we are gone; and when we come back
we'll all have some.  A good strong cup of tea will set everybody
right for going home."

When Arabella, Jude, and Donn had disappeared on their matrimonial
errand the assembled guests yawned themselves wider awake, and
discussed the situation with great interest.  Tinker Taylor, being
the most sober, reasoned the most lucidly.

"I don't wish to speak against friends," he said.  "But it do seem a
rare curiosity for a couple to marry over again!  If they couldn't
get on the first time when their minds were limp, they won't the
second, by my reckoning."

"Do you think he'll do it?"

"He's been put upon his honour by the woman, so he med."

"He'd hardly do it straight off like this.  He's got no licence nor
anything."

"She's got that, bless you.  Didn't you hear her say so to her
father?"

"Well," said Tinker Taylor, relighting his pipe at the gas-jet.
"Take her all together, limb by limb, she's not such a bad-looking
piece--particular by candlelight.  To be sure, halfpence that have
been in circulation can't be expected to look like new ones from
the mint.  But for a woman that's been knocking about the four
hemispheres for some time, she's passable enough.  A little bit thick
in the flitch perhaps: but I like a woman that a puff o' wind won't
blow down."

Their eyes followed the movements of the little girl as she spread
the breakfast-cloth on the table they had been using, without wiping
up the slops of the liquor.  The curtains were undrawn, and the
expression of the house made to look like morning.  Some of the
guests, however, fell asleep in their chairs.  One or two went to the
door, and gazed along the street more than once.  Tinker Taylor was
the chief of these, and after a time he came in with a leer on his
face.

"By Gad, they are coming!  I think the deed's done!"

"No," said Uncle Joe, following him in.  "Take my word, he turned
rusty at the last minute.  They are walking in a very unusual way;
and that's the meaning of it!"

They waited in silence till the wedding-party could be heard entering
the house.  First into the room came Arabella boisterously; and her
face was enough to show that her strategy had succeeded.

"Mrs. Fawley, I presume?" said Tinker Taylor with mock courtesy.

"Certainly.  Mrs. Fawley again," replied Arabella blandly, pulling
off her glove and holding out her left hand.  "There's the padlock,
see...  Well, he was a very nice, gentlemanly man indeed.  I mean
the clergyman.  He said to me as gentle as a babe when all was done:
'Mrs. Fawley, I congratulate you heartily,' he says.  'For having
heard your history, and that of your husband, I think you have both
done the right and proper thing.  And for your past errors as a wife,
and his as a husband, I think you ought now to be forgiven by the
world, as you have forgiven each other,' says he.  Yes; he was a very
nice, gentlemanly man.  'The Church don't recognize divorce in her
dogma, strictly speaking,' he says: 'and bear in mind the words of
the service in your goings out and your comings in: What God hath
joined together let no man put asunder.'  Yes; he was a very nice,
gentlemanly man...  But, Jude, my dear, you were enough to make a cat
laugh!  You walked that straight, and held yourself that steady, that
one would have thought you were going 'prentice to a judge; though I
knew you were seeing double all the time, from the way you fumbled
with my finger."

"I said I'd do anything to--save a woman's honour," muttered Jude.
"And I've done it!"

"Well now, old deary, come along and have some breakfast."

"I want--some--more whisky," said Jude stolidly.

"Nonsense, dear.  Not now!  There's no more left.  The tea will take
the muddle out of our heads, and we shall be as fresh as larks."

"All right.  I've--married you.  She said I ought to marry you again,
and I have straightway.  It is true religion!  Ha--ha--ha!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Arabella plots with her father to make Jude stay with them until she can remarry him. She arranges to have his belongings brought over, and all the while, they ply Jude with liquor. Finally, they arrange an-all night party to advertise her father's shop, and in the morning Arabella insists that Jude has promised to marry her. Jude, who is intoxicated and dazed, claims he has made no such promise. But when Mr. Donn questions Jude's "honor," Jude gives in. He defends himself, claiming that he has never in his life intended to treat anyone with indignity. He is also too befuddled to make any more protests. They go off to the church and are remarried. When they return, Arabella is triumphant at having achieved her goal, while Jude is still drunk and in a daze.


prompt:
Chapter: Michaelmas came and passed, and Jude and his wife, who had lived but
a short time in her father's house after their remarriage, were in
lodgings on the top floor of a dwelling nearer to the centre of the
city.

He had done a few days' work during the two or three months since
the event, but his health had been indifferent, and it was now
precarious.  He was sitting in an arm-chair before the fire, and
coughed a good deal.

"I've got a bargain for my trouble in marrying thee over
again!" Arabella was saying to him.  "I shall have to keep 'ee
entirely--that's what 'twill come to!  I shall have to make black-pot
and sausages, and hawk 'em about the street, all to support an
invalid husband I'd no business to be saddled with at all.  Why
didn't you keep your health, deceiving one like this?  You were well
enough when the wedding was!"

"Ah, yes!" said he, laughing acridly.  "I have been thinking of
my foolish feeling about the pig you and I killed during our
first marriage.  I feel now that the greatest mercy that could be
vouchsafed to me would be that something should serve me as I served
that animal."

This was the sort of discourse that went on between them every day
now.  The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a
queer couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially
as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a
little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by
chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms,
and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of
genuine wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said
no more.

Jude did not get any better, and one day he requested Arabella, with
considerable hesitation, to execute a commission for him.  She asked
him indifferently what it was.

"To write to Sue."

"What in the name--do you want me to write to her for?"

"To ask how she is, and if she'll come to see me, because I'm ill,
and should like to see her--once again."

"It is like you to insult a lawful wife by asking such a thing!"

"It is just in order not to insult you that I ask you to do it.  You
know I love Sue.  I don't wish to mince the matter--there stands the
fact: I love her.  I could find a dozen ways of sending a letter to
her without your knowledge.  But I wish to be quite above-board with
you, and with her husband.  A message through you asking her to come
is at least free from any odour of intrigue.  If she retains any of
her old nature at all, she'll come."

"You've no respect for marriage whatever, or its rights and duties!"

"What DOES it matter what my opinions are--a wretch like me!  Can
it matter to anybody in the world who comes to see me for half an
hour--here with one foot in the grave! ...  Come, please write,
Arabella!" he pleaded.  "Repay my candour by a little generosity!"

"I should think NOT!"

"Not just once?--Oh do!"  He felt that his physical weakness had
taken away all his dignity.

"What do you want HER to know how you are for?  She don't want to see
'ee.  She's the rat that forsook the sinking ship!"

"Don't, don't!"

"And I stuck to un--the more fool I!  Have that strumpet in the house
indeed!"

Almost as soon as the words were spoken Jude sprang from the chair,
and before Arabella knew where she was he had her on her back upon a
little couch which stood there, he kneeling above her.

"Say another word of that sort," he whispered, "and I'll kill
you--here and now!  I've everything to gain by it--my own death not
being the least part.  So don't think there's no meaning in what I
say!"

"What do you want me to do?" gasped Arabella.

"Promise never to speak of her."

"Very well.  I do."

"I take your word," he said scornfully as he loosened her.  "But what
it is worth I can't say."

"You couldn't kill the pig, but you could kill me!"

"Ah--there you have me!  No--I couldn't kill you--even in a passion.
Taunt away!"

He then began coughing very much, and she estimated his life with an
appraiser's eye as he sank back ghastly pale.  "I'll send for her,"
Arabella murmured, "if you'll agree to my being in the room with you
all the time she's here."

The softer side of his nature, the desire to see Sue, made him unable
to resist the offer even now, provoked as he had been; and he replied
breathlessly: "Yes, I agree.  Only send for her!"

In the evening he inquired if she had written.

"Yes," she said; "I wrote a note telling her you were ill, and asking
her to come to-morrow or the day after.  I haven't posted it yet."

The next day Jude wondered if she really did post it, but would not
ask her; and foolish Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made him
restless with expectation.  He knew the times of the possible trains,
and listened on each occasion for sounds of her.

She did not come; but Jude would not address Arabella again thereon.
He hoped and expected all the next day; but no Sue appeared; neither
was there any note of reply.  Then Jude decided in the privacy of his
mind that Arabella had never posted hers, although she had written
it.  There was something in her manner which told it.  His physical
weakness was such that he shed tears at the disappointment when she
was not there to see.  His suspicions were, in fact, well founded.
Arabella, like some other nurses, thought that your duty towards your
invalid was to pacify him by any means short of really acting upon
his fancies.

He never said another word to her about his wish or his conjecture.
A silent, undiscerned resolve grew up in him, which gave him, if not
strength, stability and calm.  One midday when, after an absence of
two hours, she came into the room, she beheld the chair empty.

Down she flopped on the bed, and sitting, meditated.  "Now where the
devil is my man gone to!" she said.

A driving rain from the north-east had been falling with more or less
intermission all the morning, and looking from the window at the
dripping spouts it seemed impossible to believe that any sick man
would have ventured out to almost certain death.  Yet a conviction
possessed Arabella that he had gone out, and it became a certainty
when she had searched the house.  "If he's such a fool, let him be!"
she said.  "I can do no more."

Jude was at that moment in a railway train that was drawing near to
Alfredston, oddly swathed, pale as a monumental figure in alabaster,
and much stared at by other passengers.  An hour later his thin form,
in the long great-coat and blanket he had come with, but without an
umbrella, could have been seen walking along the five-mile road to
Marygreen.  On his face showed the determined purpose that alone
sustained him, but to which has weakness afforded a sorry foundation.
By the up-hill walk he was quite blown, but he pressed on; and at
half-past three o'clock stood by the familiar well at Marygreen.
The rain was keeping everybody indoors; Jude crossed the green to the
church without observation, and found the building open.  Here he
stood, looking forth at the school, whence he could hear the usual
sing-song tones of the little voices that had not learnt Creation's
groan.

He waited till a small boy came from the school--one evidently
allowed out before hours for some reason or other.  Jude held up his
hand, and the child came.

"Please call at the schoolhouse and ask Mrs. Phillotson if she will
be kind enough to come to the church for a few minutes."

The child departed, and Jude heard him knock at the door of the
dwelling.  He himself went further into the church.  Everything
was new, except a few pieces of carving preserved from the wrecked
old fabric, now fixed against the new walls.  He stood by these:
they seemed akin to the perished people of that place who were his
ancestors and Sue's.

A light footstep, which might have been accounted no more than an
added drip to the rainfall, sounded in the porch, and he looked
round.

"Oh--I didn't think it was you!  I didn't--Oh, Jude!"  A hysterical
catch in her breath ended in a succession of them.  He advanced, but
she quickly recovered and went back.

"Don't go--don't go!" he implored.  "This is my last time!  I thought
it would be less intrusive than to enter your house.  And I shall
never come again.  Don't then be unmerciful.  Sue, Sue!  We are
acting by the letter; and 'the letter killeth'!"

"I'll stay--I won't be unkind!" she said, her mouth quivering and her
tears flowing as she allowed him to come closer.  "But why did you
come, and do this wrong thing, after doing such a right thing as you
have done?"

"What right thing?"

"Marrying Arabella again.  It was in the Alfredston paper.  She has
never been other than yours, Jude--in a proper sense.  And therefore
you did so well--Oh so well!--in recognizing it--and taking her to
you again."

"God above--and is that all I've come to hear?  If there is anything
more degrading, immoral, unnatural, than another in my life, it is
this meretricious contract with Arabella which has been called doing
the right thing!  And you too--you call yourself Phillotson's wife!
HIS wife!  You are mine."

"Don't make me rush away from you--I can't bear much!  But on this
point I am decided."

"I cannot understand how you did it--how you think it--I cannot!"

"Never mind that.  He is a kind husband to me--And I--I've wrestled
and struggled, and fasted, and prayed.  I have nearly brought my body
into complete subjection.  And you mustn't--will you--wake--"

"Oh you darling little fool; where is your reason?  You seem to have
suffered the loss of your faculties!  I would argue with you if I
didn't know that a woman in your state of feeling is quite beyond all
appeals to her brains.  Or is it that you are humbugging yourself, as
so many women do about these things; and don't actually believe what
you pretend to, and only are indulging in the luxury of the emotion
raised by an affected belief?"

"Luxury!  How can you be so cruel!"

"You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human
intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold!  Where is your
scorn of convention gone?  I WOULD have died game!"

"You crush, almost insult me, Jude!  Go away from me!"  She turned
off quickly.

"I will.  I would never come to see you again, even if I had the
strength to come, which I shall not have any more.  Sue, Sue, you are
not worth a man's love!"

Her bosom began to go up and down.  "I can't endure you to say that!"
she burst out, and her eye resting on him a moment, she turned back
impulsively.  "Don't, don't scorn me!  Kiss me, oh kiss me lots
of times, and say I am not a coward and a contemptible humbug--I
can't bear it!"  She rushed up to him and, with her mouth on his,
continued: "I must tell you--oh I must--my darling Love!  It has
been--only a church marriage--an apparent marriage I mean!  He
suggested it at the very first!"

"How?"

"I mean it is a nominal marriage only.  It hasn't been more than that
at all since I came back to him!"

"Sue!" he said.  Pressing her to him in his arms, he bruised her
lips with kisses. "If misery can know happiness, I have a moment's
happiness now!  Now, in the name of all you hold holy, tell me the
truth, and no lie.  You do love me still?"

"I do!  You know it too well! ...  But I MUSTN'T do this!  I mustn't
kiss you back as I would!"

"But do!"

"And yet you are so dear!--and you look so ill--"

"And so do you!  There's one more, in memory of our dead little
children--yours and mine!"

The words struck her like a blow, and she bent her head.  "I
MUSTN'T--I CAN'T go on with this!" she gasped presently.  "But there,
there, darling; I give you back your kisses; I do, I do! ...  And now
I'll HATE myself for ever for my sin!"

"No--let me make my last appeal.  Listen to this!  We've both
remarried out of our senses.  I was made drunk to do it.  You were
the same.  I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk.  Either form of
intoxication takes away the nobler vision...  Let us then shake off
our mistakes, and run away together!"

"No; again no! ...  Why do you tempt me so far, Jude!  It is too
merciless! ...  But I've got over myself now.  Don't follow me--don't
look at me.  Leave me, for pity's sake!"

She ran up the church to the east end, and Jude did as she requested.
He did not turn his head, but took up his blanket, which she had not
seen, and went straight out.  As he passed the end of the church she
heard his coughs mingling with the rain on the windows, and in a last
instinct of human affection, even now unsubdued by her fetters, she
sprang up as if to go and succour him.  But she knelt down again, and
stopped her ears with her hands till all possible sound of him had
passed away.

He was by this time at the corner of the green, from which the path
ran across the fields in which he had scared rooks as a boy.  He
turned and looked back, once, at the building which still contained
Sue; and then went on, knowing that his eyes would light on that
scene no more.

There are cold spots up and down Wessex in autumn and winter weather;
but the coldest of all when a north or east wind is blowing is the
crest of the down by the Brown House, where the road to Alfredston
crosses the old Ridgeway.  Here the first winter sleets and snows
fall and lie, and here the spring frost lingers last unthawed.  Here
in the teeth of the north-east wind and rain Jude now pursued his
way, wet through, the necessary slowness of his walk from lack of his
former strength being insufficent to maintain his heat.  He came to
the milestone, and, raining as it was, spread his blanket and lay
down there to rest.  Before moving on he went and felt at the back
of the stone for his own carving.  It was still there; but nearly
obliterated by moss.  He passed the spot where the gibbet of his
ancestor and Sue's had stood, and descended the hill.

It was dark when he reached Alfredston, where he had a cup of tea,
the deadly chill that began to creep into his bones being too much
for him to endure fasting.  To get home he had to travel by a steam
tram-car, and two branches of railway, with much waiting at a
junction.  He did not reach Christminster till ten o'clock.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: It is three months after Jude's wedding. Jude has returned to his work, but as winter approaches, he falls ill with consumption. Arabella is angry at being saddled with a sick husband whom she will now have to support. She quickly becomes tired of him, and their quarrels resume. As Jude's health declines, he asks Arabella to write to Sue to ask her to visit them. Arabella is indignant at his request and they quarrel. Arabella calls Sue a strumpet , and Jude reacts violently. Finally, Arabella agrees to write the letter, but she never sends it. Jude, after waiting a few days, finally decides to visit Sue himself. He slips out on a cold, rainy day clothed in an overcoat and blanket and takes the train to Alfredston. From there he walks the five miles to Marygreen in the rain. He waits in the church and sends a message to Sue. Sue is not prepared for him and is horrified at his appearance. She congratulates him on having done the right thing in marrying Arabella. Jude pleads and argues with her for the last time. He even kisses her passionately. Sue admits she loves him and confesses that she and Phillotson are married in name only. Sue, however, refuses to run away with him, considering it her duty to remain with Phillotson. Jude leaves her and goes out in the rainy weather to make his journey back to Christminster. In his precarious state of health, the journey is likely to be fatal for him.


prompt:
Chapter: On the platform stood Arabella.  She looked him up and down.

"You've been to see her?" she asked.

"I have," said Jude, literally tottering with cold and lassitude.

"Well, now you'd best march along home."

The water ran out of him as he went, and he was compelled to lean
against the wall to support himself while coughing.

"You've done for yourself by this, young man," said she.  "I don't
know whether you know it."

"Of course I do.  I meant to do for myself."

"What--to commit suicide?"

"Certainly."

"Well, I'm blest!  Kill yourself for a woman."

"Listen to me, Arabella.  You think you are the stronger; and so
you are, in a physical sense, now.  You could push me over like a
nine-pin.  You did not send that letter the other day, and I could
not resent your conduct.  But I am not so weak in another way as
you think.  I made up my mind that a man confined to his room by
inflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left in
the world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could neatly
accomplish those two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey in
the rain.  That I've done.  I have seen her for the last time, and
I've finished myself--put an end to a feverish life which ought never
to have been begun!"

"Lord--you do talk lofty!  Won't you have something warm to drink?"

"No thank you.  Let's get home."

They went along by the silent colleges, and Jude kept stopping.

"What are you looking at?"

"Stupid fancies.  I see, in a way, those spirits of the dead again,
on this my last walk, that I saw when I first walked here!"

"What a curious chap you are!"

"I seem to see them, and almost hear them rustling.  But I don't
revere all of them as I did then.  I don't believe in half of them.
The theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians,
the high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me.  All
that has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality!"

The expression of Jude's corpselike face in the watery lamplight was
indeed as if he saw people where there was nobody.  At moments he
stood still by an archway, like one watching a figure walk out; then
he would look at a window like one discerning a familiar face behind
it.  He seemed to hear voices, whose words he repeated as if to
gather their meaning.

"They seem laughing at me!"

"Who?"

"Oh--I was talking to myself!  The phantoms all about here, in the
college archways, and windows.  They used to look friendly in the old
days, particularly Addison, and Gibbon, and Johnson, and Dr. Browne,
and Bishop Ken--"

"Come along do!  Phantoms!  There's neither living nor dead
hereabouts except a damn policeman!  I never saw the streets
emptier."

"Fancy!  The Poet of Liberty used to walk here, and the great
Dissector of Melancholy there!"

"I don't want to hear about 'em!  They bore me."

"Walter Raleigh is beckoning to me from that lane--Wycliffe--Harvey--
Hooker--Arnold--and a whole crowd of Tractarian Shades--"

"I DON'T WANT to know their names, I tell you!  What do I care about
folk dead and gone?  Upon my soul you are more sober when you've been
drinking than when you have not!"

"I must rest a moment," he said; and as he paused, holding to the
railings, he measured with his eye the height of a college front.
"This is old Rubric.  And that Sarcophagus; and up that lane Crozier
and Tudor: and all down there is Cardinal with its long front, and
its windows with lifted eyebrows, representing the polite surprise of
the university at the efforts of such as I."

"Come along, and I'll treat you!"

"Very well.  It will help me home, for I feel the chilly fog from
the meadows of Cardinal as if death-claws were grabbing me through
and through.  As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men nor
ghosts.  But, Arabella, when I am dead, you'll see my spirit flitting
up and down here among these!"

"Pooh!  You mayn't die after all.  You are tough enough yet, old
man."

It was night at Marygreen, and the rain of the afternoon showed no
sign of abatement.  About the time at which Jude and Arabella were
walking the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin
crossed the green, and opened the back door of the schoolmaster's
dwelling, which she often did now before bedtime, to assist Sue in
putting things away.

Sue was muddling helplessly in the kitchen, for she was not a good
housewife, though she tried to be, and grew impatient of domestic
details.

"Lord love 'ee, what do ye do that yourself for, when I've come o'
purpose!  You knew I should come."

"Oh--I don't know--I forgot!  No, I didn't forget.  I did it to
discipline myself.  I have scrubbed the stairs since eight o'clock.
I MUST practise myself in my household duties.  I've shamefully
neglected them!"

"Why should ye?  He'll get a better school, perhaps be a parson, in
time, and you'll keep two servants.  'Tis a pity to spoil them pretty
hands."

"Don't talk of my pretty hands, Mrs. Edlin.  This pretty body of mine
has been the ruin of me already!"

"Pshoo--you've got no body to speak of!  You put me more in mind
of a sperrit.  But there seems something wrong to-night, my dear.
Husband cross?"

"No. He never is.  He's gone to bed early."

"Then what is it?"

"I cannot tell you.  I have done wrong to-day. And I want to
eradicate it...  Well--I will tell you this--Jude has been here this
afternoon, and I find I still love him--oh, grossly!  I cannot tell
you more."

"Ah!" said the widow.  "I told 'ee how 'twould be!"

"But it shan't be!  I have not told my husband of his visit; it is
not necessary to trouble him about it, as I never mean to see Jude
any more.  But I am going to make my conscience right on my duty to
Richard--by doing a penance--the ultimate thing. I must!"

"I wouldn't--since he agrees to it being otherwise, and it has gone
on three months very well as it is."

"Yes--he agrees to my living as I choose; but I feel it is an
indulgence I ought not to exact from him.  It ought not to have been
accepted by me.  To reverse it will be terrible--but I must be more
just to him.  O why was I so unheroic!"

"What is it you don't like in him?" asked Mrs. Edlin curiously.

"I cannot tell you.  It is something...  I cannot say.  The mournful
thing is, that nobody would admit it as a reason for feeling as I do;
so that no excuse is left me."

"Did you ever tell Jude what it was?"

"Never."

"I've heard strange tales o' husbands in my time," observed the widow
in a lowered voice.  "They say that when the saints were upon the
earth devils used to take husbands' forms o' nights, and get poor
women into all sorts of trouble.  But I don't know why that should
come into my head, for it is only a tale...  What a wind and rain it
is to-night!  Well--don't be in a hurry to alter things, my dear.
Think it over."

"No, no!  I've screwed my weak soul up to treating him more
courteously--and it must be now--at once--before I break down!"

"I don't think you ought to force your nature.  No woman ought to be
expected to."

"It is my duty.  I will drink my cup to the dregs!"

Half an hour later when Mrs. Edlin put on her bonnet and shawl to
leave, Sue seemed to be seized with vague terror.

"No--no--don't go, Mrs. Edlin," she implored, her eyes enlarged, and
with a quick nervous look over her shoulder.

"But it is bedtime, child."

"Yes, but--there's the little spare room--my room that was.  It is
quite ready.  Please stay, Mrs. Edlin!--I shall want you in the
morning."

"Oh well--I don't mind, if you wish.  Nothing will happen to my four
old walls, whether I be there or no."

She then fastened up the doors, and they ascended the stairs
together.

"Wait here, Mrs. Edlin," said Sue.  "I'll go into my old room a
moment by myself."

Leaving the widow on the landing Sue turned to the chamber which had
been hers exclusively since her arrival at Marygreen, and pushing to
the door knelt down by the bed for a minute or two.  She then arose,
and taking her night-gown from the pillow undressed and came out to
Mrs. Edlin.  A man could be heard snoring in the room opposite.  She
wished Mrs. Edlin good-night, and the widow entered the room that Sue
had just vacated.

Sue unlatched the other chamber door, and, as if seized with
faintness, sank down outside it.  Getting up again she half opened
the door, and said "Richard."  As the word came out of her mouth she
visibly shuddered.

The snoring had quite ceased for some time, but he did not reply.
Sue seemed relieved, and hurried back to Mrs. Edlin's chamber.  "Are
you in bed, Mrs. Edlin?" she asked.

"No, dear," said the widow, opening the door.  "I be old and slow,
and it takes me a long while to un-ray.  I han't unlaced my jumps
yet."

"I--don't hear him!  And perhaps--perhaps--"

"What, child?"

"Perhaps he's dead!" she gasped.  "And then--I should be FREE, and I
could go to Jude! ...  Ah--no--I forgot HER--and God!"

"Let's go and hearken.  No--he's snoring again.  But the rain and the
wind is so loud that you can hardly hear anything but between
whiles."

Sue had dragged herself back.  "Mrs. Edlin, good-night again!  I am
sorry I called you out."  The widow retreated a second time.

The strained, resigned look returned to Sue's face when she was
alone.  "I must do it--I must!  I must drink to the dregs!" she
whispered. "Richard!" she said again.

"Hey--what?  Is that you, Susanna?"

"Yes."

"What do you want?  Anything the matter?  Wait a moment."  He pulled
on some articles of clothing, and came to the door.  "Yes?"

"When we were at Shaston I jumped out of the window rather than that
you should come near me.  I have never reversed that treatment till
now--when I have come to beg your pardon for it, and ask you to let
me in."

"Perhaps you only think you ought to do this?  I don't wish you to
come against your impulses, as I have said."

"But I beg to be admitted."  She waited a moment, and repeated,
"I beg to be admitted!  I have been in error--even to-day. I have
exceeded my rights.  I did not mean to tell you, but perhaps I ought.
I sinned against you this afternoon."

"How?"

"I met Jude!  I didn't know he was coming.  And--"

"Well?"

"I kissed him, and let him kiss me."

"Oh--the old story!"

"Richard, I didn't know we were going to kiss each other till we
did!"

"How many times?"

"A good many.  I don't know.  I am horrified to look back on it, and
the least I can do after it is to come to you like this."

"Come--this is pretty bad, after what I've done!  Anything else to
confess?"

"No."  She had been intending to say: "I called him my darling Love."
But, as a contrite woman always keeps back a little, that portion of
the scene remained untold.  She went on: "I am never going to see him
any more.  He spoke of some things of the past, and it overcame me.
He spoke of--the children.  But, as I have said, I am glad--almost
glad I mean--that they are dead, Richard.  It blots out all that life
of mine!"

"Well--about not seeing him again any more.  Come--you really mean
this?"  There was something in Phillotson's tone now which seemed to
show that his three months of remarriage with Sue had somehow not
been so satisfactory as his magnanimity or amative patience had
anticipated.

"Yes, yes!"

"Perhaps you'll swear it on the New Testament?"

"I will."

He went back to the room and brought out a little brown Testament.
"Now then: So help you God!"

She swore.

"Very good!"

"Now I supplicate you, Richard, to whom I belong, and whom I wish to
honour and obey, as I vowed, to let me in."

"Think it over well.  You know what it means.  Having you back in the
house was one thing--this another.  So think again."

"I have thought--I wish this!"

"That's a complaisant spirit--and perhaps you are right.  With a
lover hanging about, a half-marriage should be completed.  But I
repeat my reminder this third and last time."

"It is my wish! ...  O God!"

"What did you say 'O God' for?"

"I don't know!"

"Yes you do!  But ..."  He gloomily considered her thin and fragile
form a moment longer as she crouched before him in her night-clothes.
"Well, I thought it might end like this," he said presently.  "I owe
you nothing, after these signs; but I'll take you in at your word,
and forgive you."

He put his arm round her to lift her up.  Sue started back.

"What's the matter?" he asked, speaking for the first time sternly.
"You shrink from me again?--just as formerly!"

"No, Richard--I--I--was not thinking--"

"You wish to come in here?"

"Yes."

"You still bear in mind what it means?"

"Yes.  It is my duty!"

Placing the candlestick on the chest of drawers he led her through
the doorway, and lifting her bodily, kissed her.  A quick look of
aversion passed over her face, but clenching her teeth she uttered
no cry.

Mrs. Edlin had by this time undressed, and was about to get into bed
when she said to herself: "Ah--perhaps I'd better go and see if the
little thing is all right.  How it do blow and rain!"

The widow went out on the landing, and saw that Sue had disappeared.  "Ah!
Poor soul!  Weddings be funerals 'a b'lieve nowadays.  Fifty-five
years ago, come Fall, since my man and I married!  Times have changed
since then!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Arabella waits for Jude at the Christminster railway platform. She helps him home and chides him for the risk he took in going out in the rain. But Jude tells her that he did it deliberately, in the hope that the exposure would kill him. He claims that he had only two wishes: to see Sue and to die. He declares that he has accomplished both at once with his journey to Marygreen. As they walk home, he imagines that he can see the spirits of the great scholars of Christminster: Addison and Gibbon, Johnson, Walter Raleigh and Wycliffe. This vision is similar to the one he had when he first arrived in Christminster, however, this time the scholars seem to mock him. Arabella is impatient with his fantasies. At Marygreen, Mrs. Edlin has come to help Sue with the housework and finds that Sue has been scrubbing the stairs to punish herself for her sin that afternoon. She tells Mrs. Edlin of Jude's visit and that she still loves him. She declares, however, that she will make amends for what has happened by sleeping with Phillotson. Mrs. Edlin tries to dissuade her, since it is obvious that Sue is forcing herself to do this, but Sue is determined to inflict this penance on herself. She goes to Phillotson's room, wakes him up and confesses to meeting with Jude that afternoon and to the kiss they shared. But she promises she will never see Jude again. Phillotson asks her to swear on the New Testament and she does. Phillotson asks her twice if she is sure she wants to give herself to him. Although at first she recoils, Sue controls her aversion, and Phillotson lifts her up and carries her into his room.