may be the same. In the twilight of the
morning light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is
the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy
reverse.
    Being so often - possibly not always by chance - the first two persons to
get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves the first persons up of all
the world. In these early days of her residence here Tess did not skim, but went
out of doors at once after rising, where he was generally awaiting her. The
spectral, half-compounded, aqueous light which pervaded the open mead, impressed
them with a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and Eve. At this dim
inceptive stage of the day Tess seemed to Clare to exhibit a dignified largeness
both of disposition and physique, an almost regnant power, possibly because he
knew that at that preternatural time hardly any woman so well endowed in person
as she was likely to be walking in the open air within the boundaries of his
horizon; very few in all England. Fair women are usually asleep at midsummer
dawns. She was close at hand, and the rest were nowhere.
    The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they walked along together to
the spot where the cows lay, often made him think of the Resurrection hour. He
little thought that the Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape
was in neutral shade his companion's face, which was the focus of his eyes,
rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it.
She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face,
without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the
north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same aspect to
her.
    It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was
no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman - a whole sex condensed
into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names
half teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand them.
    »Call me Tess,« she would say askance; and he did.
    Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become simply feminine;
they had changed from those of a divinity who could confer bliss to those of a
being who craved it.
    At these non-human hours they could get quite close to the waterfowl. Herons
came, with