Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays 36. CHAPTER XXXVI (continued)

A last despair passed over Clare's face.

"Is he in England?"

"Yes."

He took a few vague steps.

"My position--is this," he said abruptly. "I thought-- any man would have thought--that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure rustic innocence as surely as I should secure pink cheeks; but----However, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not."

Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder had not been needed. Therein lay just the distress of it; she saw that he had lost all round.

"Angel--I should not have let it go on to marriage with you if I had not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you; though I hoped you would never----"

Her voice grew husky.

"A last way?"

"I mean, to get rid of me. You CAN get rid of me."

"How?"

"By divorcing me."

"Good heavens--how can you be so simple! How can I divorce you?"

"Can't you--now I have told you? I thought my confession would give you grounds for that."

"O Tess--you are too, too--childish--unformed--crude, I suppose! I don't know what you are. You don't understand the law--you don't understand!"

"What--you cannot?"

"Indeed I cannot."

A quick shame mixed with the misery upon his listener's face.