Love Found in Honest Conversation — Far from the Madding Crowd

Bathsheba revives with spring yet shuns company, superintends farming from necessity without riding the fields as before, and one August evening enters the churchyard to read the double tomb where Troy's inscription now joins Fanny Robin's while children inside practise Lead, kindly Light. Gabriel Oak, singing bass in the choir though she did not know it, finds her weeping on the bench; they speak of the stone, then of his plan to leave for California and give up managing her farm though Boldwood's trustees still want him on the refused tenancy. Her dismay reveals how much she relies on his old fidelity; his distant notes and avoided parlour visits through autumn convince her she is despised like a servant. On a snowy February evening he helps with distressed ewes and lambs by the fire; pressed, he admits he has been sniffing about waiting for Boldwood's farm with a thought of marrying her someday. She says too soon; he mishears too absurd; she cries that he never will know because he never asks, and they part with Hardy's meditation that camaraderie born of shared labour proves stronger than passion evanescent as steam. The chapter points toward the plain secret wedding Bathsheba will soon request.