Page:Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891 Volume 2).pdf/218

He paused; then suddenly broke into horrible introspective laughter—as unnatural and ghastly as a laugh in hell.

‘Don’t—don’t!’ It kills me quite, that!’ she shrieked. ‘Have mercy upon me—have mercy!’

He did not answer; and, sickly white, she jumped up.

‘Angel, Angel! what do you mean?’ she cried out. ‘Do you know what this is to me?’

He shook his head in uncomprehensive reverie.

‘I have been hoping, longing, praying, to make you happy! I have thought what joy it will be to do it, what an unworthy wife I shall be if I do not! That’s what I have felt, Angel!’

‘I know that.’

‘I thought, Angel, that you loved me—me, my very self! If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It frightens me! Having begun to love ’ee, I love ’ee for ever—in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself, I ask no more. Then how can you, O my own husband, stop loving me?’

‘I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you.’

‘But who?’