He surprised the young woman whom he had looked upon as his all in this world by saying to her, as if he did not care about her more:  “I am going to leave Casterbridge, Elizabeth-Jane.”

“Leave Casterbridge!” she cried, “and leave—­me?”

“Yes, this little shop can be managed by you alone as well as by us both; I don’t care about shops and streets and folk—­I would rather get into the country by myself, out of sight, and follow my own ways, and leave you to yours.”

She looked down and her tears fell silently.  It seemed to her that this resolve of his had come on account of her attachment and its probable result.  She showed her devotion to Farfrae, however, by mastering her emotion and speaking out.

“I am sorry you have decided on this,” she said with difficult firmness.  “For I thought it probable—­possible—­that I might marry Mr. Farfrae some little time hence, and I did not know that you disapproved of the step!”

“I approve of anything you desire to do, Izzy,” said Henchard huskily.  “If I did not approve it would be no matter!  I wish to go away.  My presence might make things awkward in the future, and, in short, it is best that I go.”

Nothing that her affection could urge would induce him to reconsider his determination; for she could not urge what she did not know—­that when she should learn he was not related to her other than as a step-parent she would refrain from despising him, and that when she knew what he had done to keep her in ignorance she would refrain from hating him.  It was his conviction that she would not so refrain; and there existed as yet neither word nor event which could argue it away.

“Then,” she said at last, “you will not be able to come to my wedding; and that is not as it ought to be.”

“I don’t want to see it—­I don’t want to see it!” he exclaimed; adding more softly, “but think of me sometimes in your future life—­you’ll do that, Izzy?—­think of me when you are living as the wife of the richest, the foremost man in the town, and don’t let my sins, when you know them all, cause ’ee to quite forget that though I loved ’ee late I loved ’ee well.”

“It is because of Donald!” she sobbed.

“I don’t forbid you to marry him,” said Henchard.  “Promise not to quite forget me when——­” He meant when Newson should come.

She promised mechanically, in her agitation; and the same evening at dusk Henchard left the town, to whose development he had been one of the chief stimulants for many years.  During the day he had bought a new tool-basket, cleaned up his old hay-knife and wimble, set himself up in fresh leggings, kneenaps and corduroys, and in other ways gone back to the working clothes of his young manhood, discarding for ever the shabby-genteel suit of cloth and rusty silk hat that since his decline had characterized him in the Casterbridge street as a man who had seen better days.