His consistency was, indeed, too cruel. She no longer
expected forgiveness now. More than once she thought of going away
from him during his absence at the mill; but she feared that this,
instead of benefiting him, might be the means of hampering and
humiliating him yet more if it should become known.
Meanwhile Clare was meditating, verily. His thought had been
unsuspended; he was becoming ill with thinking; eaten out with
thinking, withered by thinking; scourged out of all his former
pulsating, flexuous domesticity. He walked about saying to himself,
"What's to be done--what's to be done?" and by chance she overheard
him. It caused her to break the reserve about their future which had
hitherto prevailed.
"I suppose--you are not going to live with me--long, are you, Angel?"
she asked, the sunk corners of her mouth betraying how purely
mechanical were the means by which she retained that expression of
chastened calm upon her face.
"I cannot" he said, "without despising myself, and what is worse,
perhaps, despising you. I mean, of course, cannot live with you
in the ordinary sense. At present, whatever I feel, I do not
despise you. And, let me speak plainly, or you may not see all my
difficulties.
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