 should laugh at martyrdom.
    »Tessy!« came from behind her, and Clare sprang across the gully, alighting
beside her feet. »My wife - soon!«
    »No, no; I cannot. For your sake, O Mr. Clare; for your sake, I say no!«
    »Tess!«
    »Still I say no!« she repeated.
    Not expecting this he had put his arm lightly round her waist the moment
after speaking, beneath her hanging tail of hair. (The younger dairymaids,
including Tess, breakfasted with their hair loose on Sunday mornings before
building it up extra high for attending church, a style they could not adopt
when milking with their heads against the cows.) If she had said »Yes« instead
of »No« he would have kissed her; it had evidently been his intention; but her
determined negative deterred his scrupulous heart. Their condition of
domiciliary comradeship put her, as the woman, to such disadvantage by its
enforced intercourse, that he felt it unfair to her to exercise any pressure of
blandishment which he might have honestly employed had she been better able to
avoid him. He released her momentarily-imprisoned waist, and withheld the kiss.
    It all turned on that release. What had given her strength to refuse him
this time was solely the tale of the widow told by the dairyman; and that would
have been overcome in another moment. But Angel said no more; his face was
perplexed; he went away.
    Day after day they met - somewhat less constantly than before; and thus two
or three weeks went by. The end of September drew near, and she could see in his
eye that he might ask her again.
    His plan of procedure was different now - as though he had made up his mind
that her negatives were, after all, only coyness and youth startled by the
novelty of the proposal. The fitful evasiveness of her manner when the subject
was under discussion countenanced the idea. So he played a more coaxing game;
and while never going beyond words, or attempting the renewal of caresses, he
did his utmost orally.
    In this way Clare persistently wooed her in undertones like that of the
purling milk - at the cow's side, at skimmings, at butter-makings, at
cheese-makings, among broody poultry, and among farrowing pigs - as no milkmaid
was ever wooed before by such a man.
    Tess knew that she must break down. Neither a religious sense of a certain
moral validity in the previous union nor a conscientious wish for candour could
hold out against it much
