hoped you would never—”
Her voice grew husky.
“A last way?”
“I mean, to get rid of me. You can get rid of me.”
“How?”
“By divorcing me.”
“Good heavens—how can you be so simple! How can I divorce you?”
“Can’t you—now I have told you? I thought my confession would give you grounds for that.”
“O Tess—you are too, too—childish—unformed—crude, I suppose! I don’t know what you are. You don’t understand the law—you don’t understand!”
“What—you cannot?”
“Indeed I cannot.”
A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener’s face.
“I thought—I thought,” she whispered. “O, now I see how wicked I seem to you! Believe me—believe me, on my soul, I never thought but that you could! I hoped you would not; yet I believed, without a doubt, that you could cast me off if you were determined, and didn’t love me at—at—all!”
“You were mistaken,” he said.
“O, then I ought to have done it, to have done it last night! But I hadn’t the courage. That’s just like me!”