a seer. The wisdom of her love for him, as love, sustained her
dignity; she seemed to be wearing a crown. The compassion of his love for her,
as she saw it, made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He would sometimes
catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them, looking at him
from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before her.
    She dismissed the past - trod upon it and put it out, as one treads on a
coal that is smouldering and dangerous.
    She had not known that men could be so disinterested, chivalrous,
protective, in their love for women as he. Angel Clare was far from all that she
thought him in this respect; absurdly far, indeed; but he was, in truth, more
spiritual than animal; he had himself well in hand, and was singularly free from
grossness. Though not cold-natured, he was rather bright than hot - less Byronic
than Shelleyan; could love desperately, but with a love more especially inclined
to the imaginative and ethereal; it was a fastidious emotion which could
jealously guard the loved one against his very self. This amazed and enraptured
Tess, whose slight experiences had been so infelicitous till now; and in her
reaction from indignation against the male sex she swerved to excess of honour
for Clare.
    They unaffectedly sought each other's company; in her honest faith she did
not disguise her desire to be with him. The sum of her instincts on this matter,
if clearly stated, would have been that the elusive quality in her sex which
attracts men in general might be distasteful to so perfect a man after an avowal
of love, since it must in its very nature carry with it a suspicion of art.
    The country custom of unreserved comradeship out of doors during betrothal
was the only custom she knew, and to her it had no strangeness; though it seemed
oddly anticipative to Clare till he saw how normal a thing she, in common with
all the other dairy-folk, regarded it. Thus, during this October month of
wonderful afternoons they roved along the meads by creeping paths which followed
the brinks of trickling tributary brooks, hopping across by little wooden
bridges to the other side, and back again. They were never out of the sound of
some purling weir, whose buzz accompanied their own murmuring, while the beams
of the sun, almost as horizontal as the mead itself, formed a pollen of radiance
over the landscape. They saw tiny blue fogs in the shadows of trees and hedges,
all the time that