“You give yourself up too much to this wearying despair,” said Eustacia.  “Other men’s mothers have died.”

“That doesn’t make the loss of mine less.  Yet it is less the loss than the circumstances of the loss.  I sinned against her, and on that account there is no light for me.”

“She sinned against you, I think.”

“No, she did not.  I committed the guilt; and may the whole burden be upon my head!”

“I think you might consider twice before you say that,” Eustacia replied.  “Single men have, no doubt, a right to curse themselves as much as they please; but men with wives involve two in the doom they pray down.”

“I am in too sorry a state to understand what you are refining on,” said the wretched man.  “Day and night shout at me, ’You have helped to kill her.’  But in loathing myself I may, I own, be unjust to you, my poor wife.  Forgive me for it, Eustacia, for I scarcely know what I do.”

Eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her husband in such a state as this, which had become as dreadful to her as the trial scene was to Judas Iscariot.  It brought before her eyes the spectre of a worn-out woman knocking at a door which she would not open; and she shrank from contemplating it.  Yet it was better for Yeobright himself when he spoke openly of his sharp regret, for in silence he endured infinitely more, and would sometimes remain so long in a tense, brooding mood, consuming himself by the gnawing of his thought, that it was imperatively necessary to make him talk aloud, that his grief might in some degree expend itself in the effort.

Eustacia had not been long indoors after her look at the moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house, and Thomasin was announced by the woman downstairs.

“Ah, Thomasin!  Thank you for coming tonight,” said Clym when she entered the room.  “Here am I, you see.  Such a wretched spectacle am I, that I shrink from being seen by a single friend, and almost from you.”

“You must not shrink from me, dear Clym,” said Thomasin earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came to a sufferer like fresh air into a Black Hole.  “Nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away.  I have been here before, but you don’t remember it.”

“Yes, I do; I am not delirious, Thomasin, nor have I been so at all.  Don’t you believe that if they say so.  I am only in great misery at what I have done:  and that, with the weakness, makes me seem mad.  But it has not upset my reason.  Do you think I should remember all about my mother’s death if I were out of my mind?  No such good luck.  Two months and a half, Thomasin, the last of her life, did my poor mother live alone, distracted and mourning because of me; yet she was unvisited by me, though I was living only six miles off.  Two months and a half—­seventy-five days did the sun rise and set upon her in that deserted state which a dog didn’t deserve!  Poor people who had nothing in common with her would have cared for her, and visited her had they known her sickness and loneliness; but I, who should have been all to her, stayed away like a cur.  If there is any justice in God let Him kill me now.  He has nearly blinded me, but that is not enough.  If He would only strike me with more pain I would believe in Him for ever!”