“And I shall not stay here.  Though I didn’t like to initiate it, I have seen that it was advisable we should part—­at least for a while, till I can better see the shape that things have taken, and can write to you.”

Tess stole a glance at her husband.  He was pale, even tremulous; but, as before, she was appalled by the determination revealed in the depths of this gentle being she had married—­the will to subdue the grosser to the subtler emotion, the substance to the conception, the flesh to the spirit.  Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.

He may have observed her look, for he explained—­

“I think of people more kindly when I am away from them”; adding cynically, “God knows; perhaps we will shake down together some day, for weariness; thousands have done it!”

That day he began to pack up, and she went upstairs and began to pack also.  Both knew that it was in their two minds that they might part the next morning for ever, despite the gloss of assuaging conjectures thrown over their proceeding because they were of the sort to whom any parting which has an air of finality is a torture.  He knew, and she knew, that, though the fascination which each had exercised over the other—­on her part independently of accomplishments—­would probably in the first days of their separation be even more potent than ever, time must attenuate that effect; the practical arguments against accepting her as a housemate might pronounce themselves more strongly in the boreal light of a remoter view.  Moreover, when two people are once parted—­have abandoned a common domicile and a common environment—­new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are forgotten.

XXXVII

Midnight came and passed silently, for there was nothing to announce it in the Valley of the Froom.

Not long after one o’clock there was a slight creak in the darkened farmhouse once the mansion of the d’Urbervilles.  Tess, who used the upper chamber, heard it and awoke.  It had come from the corner step of the staircase, which, as usual, was loosely nailed.  She saw the door of her bedroom open, and the figure of her husband crossed the stream of moonlight with a curiously careful tread.  He was in his shirt and trousers only, and her first flush of joy died when she perceived that his eyes were fixed in an unnatural stare on vacancy.  When he reached the middle of the room he stood still and murmured in tones of indescribable sadness—­

“Dead! dead! dead!”

Under the influence of any strongly-disturbing force, Clare would occasionally walk in his sleep, and even perform strange feats, such as he had done on the night of their return from market just before their marriage, when he re-enacted in his bedroom his combat with the man who had insulted her.  Tess saw that continued mental distress had wrought him into that somnambulistic state now.