This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how
great and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a
deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the
shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of
judgement this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product
of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and
conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No
prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself,
that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the
praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same
dislike of evil, her moral value having to be reckoned not by
achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the figure near at hand
suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its sorriness without
shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their
distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering
what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the
defective can be more than the entire.
XL
At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a
hopeful view of Clare's proposed experiment with that country's soil,
notwithstanding the discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who
had emigrated thither and returned home within the twelve months.
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