Then he clasped her with a renewed firmness of hold, and
descended the staircase. The creak of the loose stair did not awaken
him, and they reached the ground-floor safely. Freeing one of his
hands from his grasp of her for a moment, he slid back the door-bar
and passed out, slightly striking his stockinged toe against the edge
of the door. But this he seemed not to mind, and, having room for
extension in the open air, he lifted her against his shoulder, so
that he could carry her with ease, the absence of clothes taking much
from his burden. Thus he bore her off the premises in the direction
of the river a few yards distant.
His ultimate intention, if he had any, she had not yet divined; and
she found herself conjecturing on the matter as a third person might
have done. So easefully had she delivered her whole being up to him
that it pleased her to think he was regarding her as his absolute
possession, to dispose of as he should choose. It was consoling,
under the hovering terror of to-morrow's separation, to feel that he
really recognized her now as his wife Tess, and did not cast her off,
even if in that recognition he went so far as to arrogate to himself
the right of harming her.
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