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‘I will obey you like your wretched slave, even if it is to lie down and die.’

‘You are very good. But it strikes me that there is a want of harmony between your present mood of self-sacrifice and your past mood of self-preservation.’

To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much like flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated, and she only received them as inimical sounds which meant that anger ruled. She remained mute, not knowing that he was desperately smothering his affection for her. She did not observe that a tear came out upon his cheek, descending slowly, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the skin over which it rolled, like the object-lens of a microscope. But reillumination as to the terrible and total change that her confession had wrought in his life, in his universe, returned to him, and he tried desperately to advance among the new conditions in which he stood. Some consequent action was necessary; yet what?’

‘Tess,’ he said, as gently and as civilly as he could speak, ‘I cannot stay—in this room with you. I will walk out a little way.’