phase the first >> thirty one

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be connected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even concieved as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obstuteness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophies, and passing-strange destinies.

[In other words]
[We live in a messed up world, and]
[There isn't much hope of changing that]

[from Tess Of The D'Urbervilles]