want to be anything more.”
“You may think so, Tess! You are. What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said hastily, with tears in her accents. “I thought I—because I am not respectable, I mean. I told you I thought I was not respectable enough long ago—and on that account I didn’t want to marry you, only—only you urged me!”
She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him. It would almost have won round any man but Angel Clare. Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to traverse it. It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked his acceptance of Tess. Moreover, his affection itself was less fire than radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he ceased to believe he ceased to follow: contrasting in this with many impressionable natures, who remain sensuously infatuated with what they intellectually despise. He waited till her sobbing ceased.