Your scheme of religion."
"Why?"
She dropped her voice. "Because a better man than you does not
believe in such."
"What a woman's reason! Who is this better man?"
"I cannot tell you."
"Well," he declared, a resentment beneath his words seeming ready to
spring out at a moment's notice, "God forbid that I should say I am
a good man--and you know I don't say any such thing. I am new to
goodness, truly; but newcomers see furthest sometimes."
"Yes," she replied sadly. "But I cannot believe in your conversion
to a new spirit. Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don't last!"
Thus speaking she turned from the stile over which she had been
leaning, and faced him; whereupon his eyes, falling casually upon
the familiar countenance and form, remained contemplating her. The
inferior man was quiet in him now; but it was surely not extracted,
nor even entirely subdued.
"Don't look at me like that!" he said abruptly.
Tess, who had been quite unconscious of her action and mien,
instantly withdrew the large dark gaze of her eyes, stammering with
a flush, "I beg your pardon!" And there was revived in her the
wretched sentiment which had often come to her before, that in
inhabiting the fleshly tabernacle with which Nature had endowed her
she was somehow doing wrong.
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