TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES
to the idea of his wife’s following him that even when she came nearer he did not recognize her under the totally changed attire in which he now beheld her. It was not till she was quite close that he could believe her to be Tess.
‘I saw you—turn away from the station—just before I got there—and I have been following you all this way!’
She was so pale, so breathless, so quivering in every muscle, that he did not ask her a single question, but seizing her hand, and pulling it within his arm, he led her along. To avoid meeting any possible wayfarers he left the high road, and took a footpath under some fir-trees. When they were deep among the moaning boughs he stopped and looked at her inquiringly.
‘Angel,’ she said, as if waiting for this, ‘do you know what I have been running after you for? To tell you that I have killed him!’ A pitiful white smile lit her face as she spoke.
‘What!’ said he, thinking from the strangeness of her manner that she was in some delirium.
‘I have done it—I don’t know how,’ she continued. ‘Still, I owed it to ‘ee, and to myself, Angel. I feared long ago, when I struck him on
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