But whether Mr. Clare has spoken seriously or not, why should she, who could never conscientiously allow any man to marry now, and who had religiously determined that she never would be tempted to do so, draw off Mr. Clare's attention from other women, for the brief happiness of sunning herself in his eyes while he remained at Talbothays?
"Three Leahs to get one Rachel," he whispered.
"They are better women than I," she replied, magnanimously sticking to her resolve.
"Not to me," said Mr. Clare.
He saw her grow warm at this; and they went some steps in silence.
"Do you know that I have undergone three-quarters of this labor entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?"
"No."
Tess's heart ached. There was no concealing from herself the fact that she loved Mr. Clare, perhaps all the more passionately from knowing that the others had also lost their hearts to him. There is contagion in this sentiment, especially among women. And yet that same hungry nature had fought against this, but too feeble, and the natural result had followed.
After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish thought that there lurked any grave and deliberate import in Clare's attentions to her. It was a passing summer love of her face, for love's own temporary sake - nothing more. And the thorny crown of this sad conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.
Four months or so of torturous ecstasy in his society - of "pleasure girdled about with pain." After that the blackness of unutterable night...
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