Many besides
Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their
external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The
impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life
than the pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus, he found that life
was to be seen of the same magnitude here as elsewhere.
Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with
a conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and
dismiss; but a woman living her precious life--a life which, to
herself who endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension
as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon her sensations
the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her
fellow-creatures existed, to her. The universe itself only came into
being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which
she was born.
This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single
opportunity of existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic
First Cause--her all; her every and only chance. How then should he
look upon her as of less consequence than himself; as a pretty trifle
to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in the greatest seriousness
with the affection which he knew that he had awakened in her--so
fervid and so impressionable as she was under her reserve--in order
that it might not agonize and wreck her?
To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would be to develop
what had begun.
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