Thomas Hardy

“ The faint click of the trap as dragged about by the writhing animal guided him now, and reaching the spot he struck the rabbit on the back of the neck with the side of his palm, and it stretched itself out dead.
He was turning away when he saw a woman looking out of the open casement at a window on the ground floor of the adjacent cottage. "Jude!" said a voice timidly—Sue's voice. "It is you—is it not?" ”

“ He is considerate to me in everything; and he is very interesting, from the amount of general knowledge he has acquired by reading everything that comes in his way. ... Do you think, Jude, that a man ought to marry a woman his own age, or one younger than himself—eighteen years—as I am than he? ”

“ On Easter Monday morning he received a message from the Widow Edlin, whom he had directed to telegraph if anything serious happened:
Your aunt is sinking. Come at once. He threw down his tools and went. Three and a half hours later he was crossing the downs about Marygreen, and presently plunged into the concave field across which the short cut was made to the village. As he ascended on the other side a labouring man, who had been watching his approach from a gate across the path, moved uneasily, and prepared to speak. "I can see in his face that she is dead," said Jude. ”

“ Wouldn't the woman, for example, be very bad-natured if she didn't like to live with her husband; merely"—her voice undulated, and he guessed things—"merely because she had a personal feeling against it—a physical objection—a fastidiousness, or whatever it may be called—although she might respect and be grateful to him? ”

“ And it is said that what a woman shrinks from—in the early days of her marriage—she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a dozen years. But that is much like saying that the amputation of a limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time! ”

“ Presently she went on: "Are there many couples, do you think, where one dislikes the other for no definite fault?"
"Yes, I suppose. If either cares for another person, for instance."
"But even apart from that? ”