“But I only asked for your sake!” he retorted hotly. “Angels of heaven!—God forgive me for such an expression—I came here, I swear, as I thought for your good. Tess—don’t look at me so—I cannot stand your looks! There never were such eyes, surely, before Christianity or since! There—I won’t lose my head; I dare not. I own that the sight of you had waked up my love for you, which, I believed, was extinguished with all such feelings. But I thought that our marriage might be a sanctification for us both. ‘The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,’ I said to myself. But my plan is dashed from me; and I must bear the disappointment!”
He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground.
“Married. Married! … Well, that being so,” he added, quite calmly, tearing the licence slowly into halves and putting them in his pocket; “that being prevented, I should like to do some good to you and your husband, whoever he may be. There are many questions that I am tempted to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in opposition to your wishes. Though, if I could know your husband, I might more easily benefit him and you. Is he on this farm?”
“No,” she murmured. “He is far away.”
“Far away? From you ? What sort of husband can he be?”
“O, do not speak against him! It was through you! He found out—”
“Ah, is it so! … That’s sad, Tess!”
“Yes.”
“But to stay away from you—to leave you to work like this!”
“He does not leave me to work!” she cried, springing to the defence of the absent one with all her fervour. “He don’t know it! It is by my own arrangement.”