 afraid of endangering my chance of you,
darling, the great prize of my life - my Fellowship I call you. My brother's
Fellowship was won at his college, mine at Talbothays Dairy. Well, I would not
risk it. I was going to tell you a month ago - at the time you agreed to be
mine, but I could not; I thought it might frighten you away from me. I put it
off; then I thought I would tell you yesterday, to give you a chance at least of
escaping me. But I did not. And I did not this morning, when you proposed our
confessing our faults on the landing - the sinner that I was! But I must, now I
see you sitting there so solemnly. I wonder if you will forgive me?«
    »O yes! I am sure that -«
    »Well, I hope so. But wait a minute. You don't know. To begin at the
beginning. Though I imagine my poor father fears that I am one of the eternally
lost for my doctrines, I am of course, a believer in good morals, Tess, as much
as you. I used to wish to be a teacher of men, and it was a great disappointment
to me when I found I could not enter the Church. I admired spotlessness, even
though I could lay no claim to it, and hated impurity, as I hope I do now.
Whatever one may think of plenary inspiration, one must heartily subscribe to
these words of Paul: Be thou an example - in word, in conversation, in charity,
in spirit, in faith, in purity. It is the only safeguard for us poor human
beings. Integer vitae, says a Roman poet, who is strange company for St. Paul -
 
The man of upright life, from frailties free,
Stands not in need of Moorish spear or bow.
 
Well, a certain place is paved with good intentions, and having felt all that so
strongly, you will see what a terrible remorse it bred in me when, in the midst
of my fine aims for other people, I myself fell.«
    He then told her of that time of his life to which allusion has been made
when, tossed about by doubts and difficulties in London, like a cork on the
waves, he plunged into eight-and-forty hours' dissipation with a stranger.
    »Happily I awoke almost immediately to a sense of my folly,« he continued.
»I would have no more to say to her, and I came home
