Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what w… - Thomas Hardy

Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his, to call him her lord, her own — then,

Such a women as you a hundred men always convet - your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unvailing fancy for you - you can only marry one of that many...The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all of these men will be saddened. And not only those ninety-nine men, but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. There's my tale. That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race.

The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine.