Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Fourth: The Consequence 34. CHAPTER XXXIV (continued)

How strange it was! He seemed to be her double. She did not speak, and Clare went on----

"I did not mention it because I was afraid of endangering my chance of you, darling, the great prize of my life--my Fellowship I call you. My brother's Fellowship was won at his college, mine at Talbothays Dairy. Well, I would not risk it. I was going to tell you a month ago--at the time you agreed to be mine, but I could not; I thought it might frighten you away from me. I put it off; then I thought I would tell you yesterday, to give you a chance at least of escaping me. But I did not. And I did not this morning, when you proposed our confessing our faults on the landing--the sinner that I was! But I must, now I see you sitting there so solemnly. I wonder if you will forgive me?"

"O yes! I am sure that----"

"Well, I hope so. But wait a minute. You don't know. To begin at the beginning. Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one of the eternally lost for my doctrines, I am of course, a believer in good morals, Tess, as much as you. I used to wish to be a teacher of men, and it was a great disappointment to me when I found I could not enter the Church. I admired spotlessness, even though I could lay no claim to it, and hated impurity, as I hope I do now. Whatever one may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily subscribe to these words of Paul: 'Be thou an example-- in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.' It is the only safeguard for us poor human beings. 'INTEGER VITAE,' says a Roman poet, who is strange company for St Paul----

The man of upright life, from frailties free,
Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow

Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions, and having felt all that so strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred in me when, in the midst of my fine aims for other people, I myself fell."