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‘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 this? 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, Mr. Clare, 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 coldly.