The apple in his neck was hitting against his collar every time he drew breath and he tore at his collar nervously.

O sirs, grace is not for inholding, but for outgiving; grace could not be grace if it were otherwise.

As for the rape, well, Dr. Finch did seem like a pretty horny old fat man. I thought back to his masturbatorium, his many “wives.”

all very abstract and not too consistent in view of Hardy's own stories, which were even at that time so seriously attacked, on one side by the realists because they were said to be too unreal, and on the other by the idealists because they were too nakedly factish.