"I don't complain, Angel, I--I think it best. What
you said has quite convinced me. Yes, though nobody else should
reproach me if we should stay together, yet somewhen, years hence,
you might get angry with me for any ordinary matter, and knowing what
you do of my bygones, you yourself might be tempted to say words, and
they might be overheard, perhaps by my own children. O, what only
hurts me now would torture and kill me then! I will go--to-morrow."
"And I shall not stay here. Though I didn't like to initiate it, I
have seen that it was advisable we should part--at least for a while,
till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write
to you."
Tess stole a glance at her husband. He was pale, even tremulous;
but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the
depths of this gentle being she had married--the will to subdue the
grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the
flesh to the spirit. Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead
leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.
He may have observed her look, for he explained--
"I think of people more kindly when I am away from them"; adding
cynically, "God knows; perhaps we will shake down together some day,
for weariness; thousands have done it!"
That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and began to pack
also.
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