'I trouble you? I think I may ask, why do you trouble me?'
'Indeed I don't trouble you.'
'You say you don't? But you do! You haunt me. Those very eyes that you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago, they come to me just as you showed them then, in the night and in the day! Tess, ever since you told me of the child, it is just as if my emotions, which have been flowing in a strong stream heavenward, had suddenly found a sluice open in the direction of you, through which they have at once gushed. The Gospel channel is left dry forthwith; and it is you who have done it—you!'
She gazed with parted lips.
'What—you have given up your preaching entirely?' she asked.
She had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modern thought to despise flash enthusiasms; but, as a woman, she was somewhat appalled.
In affected lightness D'Urberville continued—
'Entirely. I have broken every engagement since that afternoon I was to address the
