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.




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!"

 Jude and Arabella are as incompatible now as they were the first time they were married, she complaining about his always being ill and he wishing he were dead. When Jude asks her to write to Sue for him, inviting her to visit, Arabella insults Sue, and he is violent with her but admits he couldn't kill her. Convinced that Arabella has never mailed the letter she wrote, Jude goes to Marygreen in spite of his ill health. When Sue congratulates him for marrying Arabella, he bitterly attacks the way she has changed and tells her she isn't worth loving. She tells him she has not given herself to Phillotson and she loves him; they embrace passionately. When he suggests they run away together, she tells him to leave. He does, passing for the last time the fields where he chased rooks and the ridge-track near the Brown House where so much has happened, even stopping to feel at the back of the milestone the carving he made there. He is back in Christminster late at night. Arabella awaits Jude at the station, and he tells her he has accomplished the only two things he now wants: to see Sue and to die. As she takes him home past the walls of the colleges, he thinks he sees the eminent men of the past as he did when he first came to Christminster, but now they seem to laugh at him. At Marygreen Sue tells Mrs. Edlin that Jude has been there, that she still loves him, and that she must now perform the most severe penance, going to Phillotson's bed. Though she asks Mrs. Edlin to stay overnight in the house because she is afraid, she goes to Phillotson, wakes him, and asks him to allow her to come in. She confesses Jude visited and they kissed, but she swears on a New Testament she will never see him again. Phillotson forgives her, and though she at first shrinks from his touch she does take his kiss without reaction.

