»Well - I don't want your opinion on that. What I was going to say is that
my liberating her can do her no possible harm, and will open up a chance of
happiness for her which she has never dreamt of hitherto. For then they'll be
able to marry, as they ought to have done at first.«
    Gillingham did not hurry to reply. »I may disagree with your motive,« he
said gently, for he respected views he could not share. »But I think you are
right in your determination - if you can carry it out. I doubt, however, if you
can.«
 

                                   Part Fifth

            »Thy aerial part, and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee,
            though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to
            the disposition of the universe they are overpowered here in the
            compound mass the body.«
                                                            M. Antoninus (Long).
 

                          At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere

                                       1

How Gillingham's doubts were disposed of will most quickly appear by passing
over the series of dreary months and incidents that followed the events of the
last chapter, and coming on to a Sunday in the February of the year following.
    Sue and Jude were living in Aldbrickham, in precisely the same relations
that they had established between themselves when she left Shaston to join him
the year before. The proceedings in the Law-Courts had reached their
consciousness but as a distant sound, and an occasional missive which they
hardly understood.
    They had met, as usual, to breakfast together in the little house with
Jude's name on it, that he had taken at fifteen pounds a year, with
three-pounds-ten extra for rates and taxes, and furnished with his aunt's
ancient and lumbering goods, which had cost him about their full value to bring
all the way from Marygreen. Sue kept house, and managed everything.
    As he entered the room this morning Sue held up a letter she had just
received.
    »Well; and what is it about?« he said after kissing her.
    »That the decree nisi in the case of Phillotson versus Phillotson and
Fawley, pronounced six months ago, has just been made absolute.«
    »Ah,« said Jude, as he sat down.
    The same concluding incident in Jude's suit against Arabella had occurred
about a month or two earlier. Both cases had been too insignificant to be
reported in the papers, further than by name in a long list of other undefended
cases.
    »Now then, Sue, at any rate, you can do what you