 turned to one of
the group who certainly was not ill-defined as plain.
    It was a thousand pities, indeed; it was impossible for even an enemy to
feel otherwise on looking at Tess as she sat there, with her flower-like mouth
and large tender eyes, neither black nor blue nor gray nor violet; rather all
those shades together, and a hundred others, which could be seen if one looked
into their irises - shade behind shade - tint beyond tint - around pupils that
had no bottom; an almost standard woman, but for the slight incautiousness of
character inherited from her race.
    A resolution which had surprised herself had brought her into the fields
this week for the first time during many months. After wearing and wasting her
palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could
devise, common-sense had illumined her. She felt that she would do well to be
useful again - to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past;
whatever it had been it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time
would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if they had never
been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just
as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The
familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened
because of her pain.
    She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly - the thought
of the world's concern at her situation - was founded on an illusion. She was
not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to
anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought.
Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. If she made
herself miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to them -
»Ah, she makes herself unhappy.« If she tried to be cheerful, to dismiss all
care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could only be
this idea to them - »Ah, she bears it very well.« Moreover, alone in a desert
island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly. If
she could have been but just created, to discover herself as a spouseless
mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless child,
would the position have caused her to despair? No, she would have taken it
calmly, and found pleasures therein. Most
