The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.

The man who had discovered that it could be tilled died of the labour; the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilizing it.

SINCE THE WOMAN'S QUIET LET NO MAN BREED A RIOT.[1]

The mental clearness and power he had found in this lonely girl had indeed filled his manner with misgiving even from the first few minutes of close quarters with her.

Her lover was no longer to her an exciting man whom many women strove for, and herself could only retain by striving with them. He was a superfluity.

So interesting , need to translate later

Nothing would please me better than to see them two man and wife."

just mark it

This was the obscure, removed spot to which was about to return a man whose latter life had been passed in the French capital—the centre and vortex of the fashionable world.

what a prelude for a man

That night was an eventful one to Eustacia's brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot. She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one. Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia's situation before.

But Providence is nothing if not coquettish; and no sooner had Eustacia formed this resolve than the opportunity came which, while sought, had been entirely withholden.

"Don't make sport of me, Miss Vye,"

Wildeve had flung towards Eustacia a glance that said plainly, "I have punished you now." She had replied in a low tone—and he little thought how truly—"You mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your wife today."

i suppose that Eustacia had no more love toward Wildeve

if I had known then what I know now, that I should be living in this wild heath a month after my marriage, I—I should have thought twice before agreeing."

The pupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness, were vaguely lit with an icy shine; his mouth had passed into the phase more or less imaginatively rendered in studies of Oedipus. The strangest deeds were possible to his mood. But they were not possible to his situation. Instead of there being before him the pale face of Eustacia, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man.

what a strong emotion under this passage. 悲愤的情感通过这段文字穿越时空让人感同身受

"O, O, O!" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking with sobs which choked her, she sank upon her knees. "O, will you have done! O, you are too relentless—there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! I have held out long—but you crush me down. I beg for mercy—I cannot bear this any longer—it is inhuman to go further with this! If I had—killed your—mother with my own hand—I should not deserve such a scourging to the bone as this. O, O! God have mercy upon a miserable woman!... You have beaten me in this game—I beg you to stay your hand in pity!... I confess that I—wilfully did not undo the door the first time she knocked—but—I should have unfastened it the second—if I had not thought you had gone to do it yourself. When I found you had not I opened it, but she was gone. That's the extent of my crime—towards her. Best natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?—I think they do. Now I will leave you—for ever and ever!"

finally confessed Eustacia, but too late, it should be happened long time ago