“But this encompassment of her own characterization,
based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and
voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mistaken creation
of Tess’s fancy—a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which
she was terrified without reason. It was they that were out
of harmony with the actual world, not she. Walking among
the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping
rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasantladen
bough, she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt
intruding into the haunts of Innocence. But all the while
she was making a distinction where there was no difference.”