Though unsophisticated in the usual
sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency
of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies
in propinquity. Nothing else would serve her, she knew, if this
failed. It was wrong to hope in what was of the nature of strategy,
she said to herself: yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish.
His last representation had now been made, and it was, as she said,
a new view. She had truly never thought so far as that, and his
lucid picture of possible offspring who would scorn her was one that
brought deadly convictions to an honest heart which was humanitarian
to its centre. Sheer experience had already taught her that in some
circumstances there was one thing better than to lead a good life,
and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever. Like all
who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of
M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, "You shall be
born," particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers.
Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess
had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might
result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had
bewailed as misfortune to herself.
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