The Well-Beloved

as they thought it undesirable to postpone their union for such a reason, Marcia, after being well wrapped up, was wheeled into the church in a chair. * * * A month thereafter, when they were sitting at breakfast one morning, Marcia exclaimed 'Well—good heavens!' while reading a letter she had just received from Avice, who was living with her husband in a house Pierston had bought for them at Sandbourne.

Serial pursuit of Avice I–III across forty years ends in Marcia's chair-wedding and Avice's separation note — a temperament plot complete without possession of the Ideal, so plot scores 85.

He had known Avice Caro so well of old that his feeling for her now was rather comradeship than love; and what he had said to her in a moment of impulse that morning rather appalled him in its consequences.

Pierston, three Avices, Marcia, and Somers are individuated by Ideal versus Island blood without collapsing into allegory only, so cast scores 84.

In the course of these long years Pierston's artistic emotions were abruptly suspended by the news of his father's sudden death at Sandbourne, whither the stone-merchant had gone for a change of air by the advice of his physician.

Three age-parts with long Island intervals; crises punctuate but peninsula meditation keeps middle decades slow, so pace scores 81.

The peninsula carved by Time out of a single stone, whereon most of the following scenes are laid, has been for centuries immemorial the home of a curious and well-nigh distinct people, cherishing strange beliefs and singular customs, now for the most part obsolescent.

Late Hardy lyric — Gibraltar of Wessex, soft-wooded sea fancies, turnip-lantern — fuses geology and erotic idealism, so prose scores 89.

climbing the steep road which leads through the sea-skirted townlet definable as the Street of Wells, and forms a pass into that Gibraltar of Wessex, the singular peninsula once an island, and still called such, that stretches out like the head of a bird into the English Channel.

Isle of Slingers, pebble neck, Sandbourne — topographically unique and generative of the temperament type, so world scores 90.

The pedestrian was what he looked like—a young man from London and the cities of the Continent. Nobody could see at present that his urbanism sat upon him only as a garment.

Urban mask on Island blood establishes the Beloved premise before Avice appears — inviting rather than shocking, so hook scores 86.

a formula, a superstition, that the three Avices were inter-penetrated with her essence. 'And the next Avice—your daughter,' he said stumblingly; 'she is, you say, a governess at the castle opposite?'

Love as migrating essence across three generations of one Island family is Hardy's boldest Platonic formal experiment, so innov scores 93.

'Why—Avice says she wants to be separated from Henri! Did you ever hear of such a thing! She's coming here about it to-day.'

Chair-wedding to Marcia plus Avice's separation letter seal ironic domestic aftermath for the Ideal-seeker, so ending scores 84.