 were not worldly young fellows, but
fraternizing with dairy-folk would have struck unpleasantly upon their biassed
niceness, apart from their views of the match.
    Upheld by the momentum of the time Tess knew nothing of this; did not see
anything; did not know the road they were taking to the church. She knew that
Angel was close to her; all the rest was a luminous mist. She was a sort of
celestial person, who owed her being to poetry - one of those classical
divinities Clare was accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks
together.
    The marriage being by licence there were only a dozen or so of people in the
church; had there been a thousand they would have produced no more effect upon
her. They were at stellar distances from her present world. In the ecstatic
solemnity with which she swore her faith to him the ordinary sensibilities of
sex seemed a flippancy. At a pause in the service, while they were kneeling
together, she unconsciously inclined herself towards him, so that her shoulder
touched his arm; she had been frightened by a passing thought, and the movement
had been automatic, to assure herself that he was really there, and to fortify
her belief that his fidelity would be proof against all things.
    Clare knew that she loved him - every curve of her form showed that - but he
did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its single-mindedness,
its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed, what honesty, what endurance,
what good faith.
    As they came out of church the ringers swung the bells off their rests, and
a modest peal of three notes broke forth - that limited amount of expression
having been deemed sufficient by the church builders for the joys of such a
small parish. Passing by the tower with her husband on the path to the gate she
could feel the vibrant air humming round them from the louvred belfry in a
circle of sound, and it matched the highly-charged mental atmosphere in which
she was living.
    This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation not her
own, like the angel whom St. John saw in the sun, lasted till the sound of the
church bells had died away, and the emotions of the wedding-service had calmed
down. Her eyes could dwell upon details more clearly now, and Mr. and Mrs. Crick
having directed their own gig to be sent for them, to leave the carriage to the
young couple, she observed the build and character of that conveyance for the
first time. Sitting in silence she regarded
