Thomas Hardy

"A Mere Interlude" is a short story by Thomas Hardy. It was first published in The Bolton Weekly Journal in October 1885. The story was reprinted in the collection A Changed Man and Other Tales.

Elfride Swancourt is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Corwall based on St Juliot, where Hardy began A Pair of Blue Eyes during the beginning of his courtship of his first wife, Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes …