The closing of the door behind him, gently as it had been pulled to, roused Tess from her stupor.  He was gone; she could not stay.  Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back.  The rain was over and the night was now clear.

She was soon close at his heels, for Clare walked slowly and without purpose.  His form beside her light gray figure looked black, sinister, and forbidding, and she felt as sarcasm the touch of the jewels of which she had been momentarily so proud.  Clare turned at hearing her footsteps, but his recognition of her presence seemed to make no difference to him, and he went on over the five yawning arches of the great bridge in front of the house.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away.  Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there—­the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean.

The place to which they had travelled to-day was in the same valley as Talbothays, but some miles lower down the river; and the surroundings being open, she kept easily in sight of him.  Away from the house the road wound through the meads, and along these she followed Clare without any attempt to come up with him or to attract him, but with dumb and vacant fidelity.

At last, however, her listless walk brought her up alongside him, and still he said nothing.  The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment, and it was mighty in Clare now.  The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she knew that he saw her without irradiation—­in all her bareness; that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then—­

   Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee
      shall hate;
   Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate. 
   For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
   And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown
      shall be pain.

He was still intently thinking, and her companionship had now insufficient power to break or divert the strain of thought.  What a weak thing her presence must have become to him!  She could not help addressing Clare.

“What have I done—­what HAVE I done!  I have not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you.  You don’t think I planned it, do you?  It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel; it is not in me.  O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me!”

“H’m—­well.  Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same.  No, not the same.  But do not make me reproach you.  I have sworn that I will not; and I will do everything to avoid it.”