he could not enter it as he had
intended to do in former years he might enter it as a licentiate. Meanwhile, he
said, he was comfortable in his present position, though he was in want of a
pupil-teacher.
    They did not stay to supper, Sue having to be indoors before it grew late,
and the road was retraced to Christminster. Though they had talked of nothing
more than general subjects Jude was surprised to find what a revelation of woman
his cousin was to him. She was so vibrant that everything she did seemed to have
its source in feeling. An exciting thought would make her walk ahead so fast
that he could hardly keep up with her; and her sensitiveness on some points was
such that it might have been misread as vanity. It was with heart-sickness he
perceived that, while her sentiments towards him were those of the frankest
friendliness only, he loved her more than before becoming acquainted with her;
and the gloom of the walk home lay not in the night overhead, but in the thought
of her departure.
    »Why must you leave Christminster?« he said regretfully. »How can you do
otherwise than cling to a city in whose history such men as Newman, Pusey, Ward,
Keble, loom so large!«
    »Yes - they do. Though how large do they loom in the history of the
world?... What a funny reason for caring to stay! I should never have thought of
it!« She laughed.
    »Well - I must go,« she continued. »Miss Fontover, one of the partners whom
I serve, is offended with me, and I with her; and it is best to go.«
    »How did that happen?«
    »She broke some statuary of mine.«
    »Oh? Wilfully?«
    »Yes. She found it in my room, and though it was my property she threw it on
the floor and stamped on it, because it was not according to her taste, and
ground the arms and the head of one of the figures all to bits with her heel - a
horrid thing!«
    »Too Catholic-Apostolic for her, I suppose? No doubt she called them Popish
images and talked of the invocation of saints.«
    »No.... No, she didn't do that. She saw the matter quite differently.«
    »Ah! Then I am surprised!«
    »Yes. It was for quite some other reason that she didn't like my
patron-saints. So I was led to retort upon