appraisements of morality. He thought they wanted readjusting. Who was the moral
man? Still more pertinently, who was the moral woman? The beauty or ugliness of
a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its
true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.
    How, then, about Tess?
    Viewing her in these lights, a regret for his hasty judgment began to
oppress him. Did he reject her eternally, or did he not? He could no longer say
that he would always reject her, and not to say that was in spirit to accept her
now.
    This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point of time with her
residence at Flintcomb-Ash, but it was before she had felt herself at liberty to
trouble him with a word about her circumstances or her feelings. He was greatly
perplexed; and in his perplexity as to her motives in withholding intelligence
he did not inquire. Thus her silence of docility was misinterpreted. How much it
really said if he had understood! - that she adhered with literal exactness to
orders which he had given and forgotten; that despite her natural fearlessness
she asserted no rights, admitted his judgment to be in every respect the true
one, and bent her head dumbly thereto.
    In the before-mentioned journey by mules through the interior of the
country, another man rode beside him. Angel's companion was also an Englishman,
bent on the same errand, though he came from another part of the island. They
were both in a state of mental depression, and they spoke of home affairs.
Confidence begat confidence. With that curious tendency evinced by men, more
especially when in distant lands, to entrust to strangers details of their lives
which they would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted to this man as
they rode along the sorrowful facts of his marriage.
    The stranger had sojourned in many more lands and among many more peoples
than Angel; to his cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the social norm, so
immense to domesticity, were no more than are the irregularities of vale and
mountain-chain to the whole terrestrial curve. He viewed the matter in quite a
different light from Angel; thought that what Tess had been was of no importance
beside what she would be, and plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming
away from her.
    The next day they were drenched in a thunder storm. Angel's companion was
struck down with fever, and died by the week's end. Clare waited a few hours to
bury him, and then went on