The next morning brought the culminating stroke;
she had been expecting it long. It was a formal notice
by letter from him that he should not renew his engage-
ment with her for the following Lady-day.
Bathsheba actually sat and cried over this letter most
bitterly. She was aggrieved and wounded that the
possession of hopeless love from Gabriel, which she had
AFTER ALL
grown to regard as her inalienable right for life, should
have been withdrawn just at his own pleasure in this
way. She was bewildered too by the prospect of having
to rely on her own resources again: it seemed to herself
that she never could again acquire energy sufficient to
go to market, barter, and sell. Since Troy's death Oak
had attended all sales and fairs for her, transacting her
business at the same time with his own. What should
she do now? Her life was becoming a desolation.
So desolate was Bathsheba this evening, that in an
absolute hunger for pity and sympathy, and miserable in
that she appeared to have outlived the only true friend-
ship she had ever owned, she put on her bonnet and
cloak and went down to Oak's house just after sunset,
guided on her way by the pale primrose rays of a
crescent moon a few days old.
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