 lighting the face of a dupe and a
failure.
    When his agitation had cooled he would be at moments incensed with his poor
wife for causing a situation in which he was obliged to practise deception on
his parents. He almost talked to her in his anger, as if she had been in the
room. And then her cooing voice, plaintive in expostulation, disturbed the
darkness, the velvet touch of her lips passed over his brow, and he could
distinguish in the air the warmth of her breath.
    This night the woman of his belittling deprecations was thinking how great
and good her husband was. But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the
shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely, the shade of his own limitations.
With all his attempted independence of judgment this advanced and well-meaning
young man, a sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave
to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No
prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that
essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel
as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, her moral value having
to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency. Moreover, the figure near at
hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade;
while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that their distance makes artistic
virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what
she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.
 

                                       XL

At breakfast Brazil was the topic, and all endeavoured to take a hopeful view of
Clare's proposed experiment with that country's soil, notwithstanding the
discouraging reports of some farm-labourers who had emigrated thither and
returned home within the twelve months. After breakfast Clare went into the
little town to wind up such trifling matters as he was concerned with there, and
to get from the local bank all the money he possessed. On his way back he
encountered Miss Mercy Chant by the church, from whose walls she seemed to be a
sort of emanation. She was carrying an armful of Bibles for her class, and such
was her view of life that events which produced heartache in others wrought
beatific smiles upon her - an enviable result, although, in the opinion of
Angel, it was obtained by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to
mysticism.
    She had learnt that he was about to leave England, and observed what an
excellent and promising scheme it seemed to be.
    »Yes
