 in a manner of inquiry
as to why he had come; and no living person in the twilighted town seemed to
notice him, still less to expect him. He was arriving like a ghost, and the
sound of his own footsteps was almost an encumbrance to be got rid of.
    The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it
but speculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man; though perhaps
he did not, even yet. Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the
pensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a
Wiertz Museum, and with the leer of a study by Van Beers.
    His conduct during these first weeks had been desultory beyond description.
After mechanically attempting to pursue his agricultural plans as though nothing
unusual had happened, in the manner recommended by the great and wise men of all
ages, he concluded that very few of those great and wise men had ever gone so
far outside themselves as to test the feasibility of their counsel. »This is the
chief thing: be not perturbed,« said the Pagan moralist. That was just Clare's
own opinion. But he was perturbed. »Let not your heart be troubled, neither let
it be afraid,« said the Nazarene. Clare chimed in cordially; but his heart was
troubled all the same. How he would have liked to confront those two great
thinkers, and earnestly appeal to them as fellow-man to fellow-men, and ask them
to tell him their method!
    His mood transmuted itself into a dogged indifference till at length he
fancied he was looking on his own existence with the passive interest of an
outsider.
    He was embittered by the conviction that all this desolation had been
brought about by the accident of her being a d'Urberville. When he found that
Tess came of that exhausted ancient line, and was not of the new tribes from
below, as he had fondly dreamed, why had he not stoically abandoned her, in
fidelity to his principles? This was what he had got by apostasy, and his
punishment was deserved.
    Then he became weary and anxious, and his anxiety increased. He wondered if
he had treated her unfairly. He ate without knowing that he ate, and drank
without tasting. As the hours dropped past, as the motive of each act in the
long series of bygone days presented itself to his view, he perceived how
intimately the notion of having Tess as a dear possession was mixed up with all
his schemes and words and ways.
    In going hither and thither he observed
