It Was Terribly Beautiful To

O, You Have Torn My Life All To Pieces... Made Me Be What I Prayed You In Pity Not To Make Me Be Again!

Though A Good Deal Is Too Strange To Be Believed, Nothing Is Too Strange To Have Happened.

Never In Her Life – She Could Swear It From The Bottom Of Her Soul – Had She Ever Intended To Do Wrong; Yet These Hard Judgments Had Come. Whatever Her Sins, They Were Not Sins Of Intention, But Of Inadvertence, And Why Should She Have Been Punished So Persistently?

Her Affection For Him Was Now The Breath And Life Of Tess's Being; It Enveloped Her As A Photosphere, Irradiated Her Into Forgetfulness Of Her Past Sorrows, Keeping Back The Gloomy Spectres That Would Persist In Their Attempts To Touch Her—doubt, Fear, Moodiness, Care, Shame. She Knew That They Were Waiting Like Wolves Just Outside The Circumscribing Light, But She Had Long Spells Of Power To Keep Them In Hungry Subjection There.

If Galileo Had Said In Verse That The World Moved, The Inquisition Might Have Let Him Alone.