? The aged and lichened
brick gables breathed forth »Stay!« The windows smiled, the door coaxed and
beckoned, the creeper blushed confederacy. A personality within it was so
far-reaching in her influence as to spread into and make the bricks, mortar, and
whole overhanging sky throb with a burning sensibility. Whose was this mighty
personality? A milkmaid's.
    It was amazing, indeed, to find how great a matter the life of the obscure
dairy had become to him. And though new love was to be held partly responsible
for this it was not solely so. Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude
of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective
experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic
life than the pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus he found that life was to
be seen of the same magnitude here as elsewhere.
    Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with a
conscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a
woman living her precious life - a life which, to herself who endured or enjoyed
it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest to himself. Upon
her sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through her existence all her
fellow-creatures existed, to her. The universe itself only came into being for
Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which she was born.
    This consciousness upon which he had intruded was the single opportunity of
existence ever vouchsafed to Tess by an unsympathetic First Cause - her all; her
every and only chance. How then should he look upon her as of less consequence
than himself; as a pretty trifle to caress and grow weary of; and not deal in
the greatest seriousness with the affection which he knew that he had awakened
in her - so fervid and so impressionable as she was under her reserve; in order
that it might not agonize and wreck her?
    To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would be to develop what had
begun. Living in such close relations, to meet meant to fall into endearment;
flesh and blood could not resist it; and, having arrived at no conclusion as to
the issue of such a tendency, he decided to hold aloof for the present from
occupations in which they would be mutually engaged. As yet the harm done was
small.
    But it was not easy to carry out the resolution never to approach her. He
was driven towards her by every heave of his pulse.
    He thought he would go and see his friends.