Past
The narrator recalls another long relationship with a married woman called Bathsheba from the past, noting that these types of relationship aren't a rarity in her/his life. The relationship was consuming to the narrator; Bathsheba exercised claim on his/her body and mind. After breaking it of, the narrator snuck into Bathsheba's home and took the letters that he/she has written for her and burned them in an attempt to rid of evidence of the relationship, to destroy the past. But, destroying the evidence of past doesn't equal forgetting it. The narrator notes the ease with which one is able to destroy the past compared to how difficult it is to forget it.
Clichés of love
The narrator contemplates the emotion that is love and clichés that surround it-clichés of having to precisely define love and precisely express it in words, some of which include well-known expressions like "love is blind", "love makes the world go around", "all you need is love" etc. The narrator expresses the wrongness in wanting to precisely express or define the emotion of love because the feeling he/she has is anything but precise, so should it even be called love?
Truth is "monstrous"
The narrator recalls how after being two years with Bathsheba and expecting from her to tell the truth to her husband eventually, decided to be the one to tell him. After revealing those intentions to Bathsheba, she tells that it would be "monstrous" to tell him. At this point the narrator quotes Shakespeare's The Tempest: "The red plague rid you for learning me your language." It is a famous quote and the main meaning behind it is that sometimes ignorance is better, more desirable, than knowledge.
