“You mock me to say that now.  On that point at least the only noble course would be to hold your tongue, for you are still queen of me, Eustacia, though I may no longer be king of you.”

“You are my husband.  Does not that content you?”

“Not unless you are my wife without regret.”

“I cannot answer you.  I remember saying that I should be a serious matter on your hands.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“Then you were too quick to see!  No true lover would have seen any such thing; you are too severe upon me, Clym—­I don’t like your speaking so at all.”

“Well, I married you in spite of it, and don’t regret doing so.  How cold you seem this afternoon! and yet I used to think there never was a warmer heart than yours.”

“Yes, I fear we are cooling—­I see it as well as you,” she sighed mournfully.  “And how madly we loved two months ago!  You were never tired of contemplating me, nor I of contemplating you.  Who could have thought then that by this time my eyes would not seem so very bright to yours, nor your lips so very sweet to mine?  Two months—­is it possible?  Yes, ’tis too true!”

“You sigh, dear, as if you were sorry for it; and that’s a hopeful sign.”

“No.  I don’t sigh for that.  There are other things for me to sigh for, or any other woman in my place.”

“That your chances in life are ruined by marrying in haste an unfortunate man?”

“Why will you force me, Clym, to say bitter things?  I deserve pity as much as you.  As much?—­I think I deserve it more.  For you can sing!  It would be a strange hour which should catch me singing under such a cloud as this!  Believe me, sweet, I could weep to a degree that would astonish and confound such an elastic mind as yours.  Even had you felt careless about your own affliction, you might have refrained from singing out of sheer pity for mine.  God! if I were a man in such a position I would curse rather than sing.”

Yeobright placed his hand upon her arm.  “Now, don’t you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in high Promethean fashion, against the gods and fate as well as you.  I have felt more steam and smoke of that sort than you have ever heard of.  But the more I see of life the more do I perceive that there is nothing particularly great in its greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small in mine of furze-cutting.  If I feel that the greatest blessings vouchsafed to us are not very valuable, how can I feel it to be any great hardship when they are taken away?  So I sing to pass the time.  Have you indeed lost all tenderness for me, that you begrudge me a few cheerful moments?”

“I have still some tenderness left for you.”

“Your words have no longer their old flavour.  And so love dies with good fortune!”

“I cannot listen to this, Clym—­it will end bitterly,” she said in a broken voice.  “I will go home.”