I gave you two choices as a test: there are never just two choices. That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply.

She wanted to talk about it, to tell the peasants in the fields and the nobles in their palashos—the cows in the pastures, the very birds in the air— that everything was nothing.It was a delightful thought because it meant (to Tess) that one was free to choose, or decline to choose, without shame or coercion. For someone who was nothing, anything was possible.

I can’t pretend to know what will happen. But I’ve been called: I’ve got to go. You know what that’s like. You answered the call of your boots.

What’s done cannot be undone.