Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders

39. CHAPTER XXXIX. (continued)

"There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.

"Still--I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being uncomfortable at the inn."

"I have, Grace, I'm sure."

"But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she returned, coming up close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained to her. "Don't you think you will ever be happy, Giles?"

He did not reply for some instants. "When the sun shines on the north front of Sherton Abbey--that's when my happiness will come to me!" said he, staring as it were into the earth.

"But--then that means that there is something more than my offending you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I-- did not like to let you kiss me in the Abbey--well, you know, Giles, that it was not on account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the true reason--the sole one. But I do not want to be hard--God knows I do not," she said, her voice fluctuating. "And perhaps--as I am on the verge of freedom-- I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any harm in your kissing me."

"Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned askance as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as Giles's, which can hardly be explained.

"Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly.

"Oh no--only that--"