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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence
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+Sons and Lovers by David Herbert Lawrence [D. H. Lawrence]
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+February, 1995  [Etext #217]
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+
+"To my beautiful, dearest mater, Lucinda Leigh Veeck - from
+her loving son, Alan Charles Veeck, Jr."
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+
+
+
+
+SONS AND LOVERS
+
+D. H. LAWRENCE
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I
+1.  The Early Married Life of the Morels
+2.  The Birth of Paul, and Another Battle
+3.  The Casting Off of Morel--The Taking on of William
+4.  The Young Life of Paul
+5.  Paul Launches into Life
+6.  Death in the Family
+
+PART II
+
+7.  Lad-and-Girl Love
+8.  Strife in Love
+9.  Defeat of Miriam
+10.  Clara
+11.  The Test on Miriam
+12.  Passion
+13.  Baxter Dawes
+14.  The Release
+15.  Derelict
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS
+
+"THE BOTTOMS" succeeded to "Hell Row".  Hell Row was a block of thatched,
+bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill Lane.  
+There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two
+fields away.  The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled
+by these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by
+donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin.  And all
+over the countryside were these same pits, some of which had been
+worked in the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys
+burrowing down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds
+and little black places among the corn-fields and the meadows.  
+And the cottages of these coal-miners, in blocks and pairs here
+and there, together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers,
+straying over the parish, formed the village of Bestwood.
+
+Then, some sixty years ago, a sudden change took place.  
+The gin-pits were elbowed aside by the large mines of
+the financiers.  The coal and iron field of Nottinghamshire and
+Derbyshire was discovered.  Carston, Waite and Co.  appeared.  
+Amid tremendous excitement, Lord Palmerston formally opened
+the company's first mine at Spinney Park, on the edge of Sherwood Forest.
+
+About this time the notorious Hell Row, which through growing
+old had acquired an evil reputation, was burned down, and much dirt
+was cleansed away.
+
+Carston, Waite & Co. found they had struck on a good thing,
+so, down the valleys of the brooks from Selby and Nuttall, new mines
+were sunk, until soon there were six pits working.  From Nuttall,
+high up on the sandstone among the woods, the railway ran, past the
+ruined priory of the Carthusians and past Robin Hood's Well, down to
+Spinney Park, then on to Minton, a large mine among corn-fields;
+from Minton across the farmlands of the valleyside to
+Bunker's Hill, branching off there, and running
+north to Beggarlee and Selby, that looks over at Crich and the hills
+of Derbyshire:  six mines like black studs on the countryside,
+linked by a loop of fine chain, the railway.
+
+To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co. 
+built the Squares, great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside
+of Bestwood, and then, in the brook valley, on the site of Hell Row,
+they erected the Bottoms.
+
+The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners' dwellings,
+two rows of three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve
+houses in a block.  This double row of dwellings sat at the foot
+of the rather sharp slope from Bestwood, and looked out, from the
+attic windows at least, on the slow climb of the valley towards Selby.
+
+The houses themselves were substantial and very decent. 
+One could walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas
+and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks
+in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches,
+little privet hedges, and dormer windows for the attics.  But that
+was outside; that was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all
+the colliers' wives.  The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was at the back
+of the house, facing inward between the blocks, looking at a scrubby
+back garden, and then at the ash-pits. And between the rows,
+between the long lines of ash-pits, went the alley, where the children
+played and the women gossiped and the men smoked.  So, the actual
+conditions of living in the Bottoms, that was so well built and
+that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury because people must live
+in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.
+
+Mrs. Morel was not anxious to move into the Bottoms,
+which was already twelve years old and on the downward path,
+when she descended to it from Bestwood.  But it was the best she
+could do.  Moreover, she had an end house in one of the top blocks,
+and thus had only one neighbour; on the other side an extra strip
+of garden.  And, having an end house, she enjoyed a kind of aristocracy
+among the other women of the "between" houses, because her rent
+was five shillings and sixpence instead of five shillings a week. 
+But this superiority in station was not much consolation to Mrs. Morel.
+
+She was thirty-one years old, and had been married eight years.
+A rather small woman, of delicate mould but resolute bearing,
+she shrank a little from the first contact with the Bottoms women. 
+She came down in the July, and in the September expected her
+third baby.
+
+Her husband was a miner.  They had only been in their new home
+three weeks when the wakes, or fair, began.  Morel, she knew, was sure
+to make a holiday of it.  He went off early on the Monday morning,
+the day of the fair.  The two children were highly excited. 
+William, a boy of seven, fled off immediately after breakfast,
+to prowl round the wakes ground, leaving Annie, who was only five,
+to whine all morning to go also.  Mrs. Morel did her work. 
+She scarcely knew her neighbours yet, and knew no one with whom
+to trust the little girl.  So she promised to take her to the wakes
+after dinner.
+
+William appeared at half-past twelve.  He was a very active lad,
+fair-haired, freckled, with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian
+about him.
+
+"Can I have my dinner, mother?" he cried, rushing in with his
+cap on.  "'Cause it begins at half-past one, the man says so."
+
+"You can have your dinner as soon as it's done," replied the mother.
+
+"Isn't it done?" he cried, his blue eyes staring at her
+in indignation.  "Then I'm goin' be-out it."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort.  It will be done in five minutes. 
+It is only half-past twelve."
+
+"They'll be beginnin'," the boy half cried, half shouted.
+
+"You won't die if they do," said the mother.  "Besides, it's
+only half-past twelve, so you've a full hour."
+
+The lad began hastily to lay the table, and directly the three
+sat down.  They were eating batter-pudding and jam, when the boy
+jumped off his chair and stood perfectly stiff.  Some distance
+away could be heard the first small braying of a merry-go-round,
+and the tooting of a horn.  His face quivered as he looked at his mother.
+
+"I told you!" he said, running to the dresser for his cap.
+
+"Take your pudding in your hand--and it's only five past one,
+so you were wrong--you haven't got your twopence," cried the mother
+in a breath.
+
+The boy came back, bitterly disappointed, for his twopence,
+then went off without a word.
+
+"I want to go, I want to go," said Annie, beginning to cry.
+
+"Well, and you shall go, whining, wizzening little stick!"
+said the mother.  And later in the afternoon she trudged up the
+hill under the tall hedge with her child.  The hay was gathered
+from the fields, and cattle were turned on to the eddish. 
+It was warm, peaceful.
+
+Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes.  There were two sets of horses,
+one going by steam, one pulled round by a pony; three organs
+were grinding, and there came odd cracks of pistol-shots, fearful
+screeching of the cocoanut man's rattle, shouts of the Aunt Sally man,
+screeches from the peep-show lady.  The mother perceived her son gazing
+enraptured outside the Lion Wallace booth, at the pictures of this
+famous lion that had killed a negro and maimed for life two white men. 
+She left him alone, and went to get Annie a spin of toffee. 
+Presently the lad stood in front of her, wildly excited.
+
+"You never said you was coming--isn't the' a lot of things?-
+that lion's killed three men-l've spent my tuppence-an' look here."
+
+He pulled from his pocket two egg-cups, with pink moss-roses
+on them.
+
+"I got these from that stall where y'ave ter get them marbles
+in them holes.  An' I got these two in two goes-'aepenny a go-they've
+got moss-roses on, look here.  I wanted these."
+
+She knew he wanted them for her.
+
+"H'm!" she said, pleased.  "They ARE pretty!"
+
+"Shall you carry 'em, 'cause I'm frightened o' breakin' 'em?"
+
+He was tipful of excitement now she had come, led her about
+the ground, showed her everything.  Then, at the peep-show, she
+explained the pictures, in a sort of story, to which he listened
+as if spellbound.  He would not leave her.  All the time he
+stuck close to her, bristling with a small boy's pride of her. 
+For no other woman looked such a lady as she did, in her little black
+bonnet and her cloak.  She smiled when she saw women she knew. 
+When she was tired she said to her son:
+
+"Well, are you coming now, or later?"
+
+"Are you goin' a'ready?" he cried, his face full of reproach.
+
+"Already?  It is past four, I know."
+
+"What are you goin' a'ready for?" he lamented.
+
+"You needn't come if you don't want," she said.
+
+And she went slowly away with her little girl, whilst her son
+stood watching her, cut to the heart to let her go, and yet unable
+to leave the wakes.  As she crossed the open ground in front of
+the Moon and Stars she heard men shouting, and smelled the beer,
+and hurried a little, thinking her husband was probably in the bar.
+
+At about half-past six her son came home, tired now, rather pale,
+and somewhat wretched.  He was miserable, though he did not know it,
+because he had let her go alone.  Since she had gone, he had not
+enjoyed his wakes.
+
+"Has my dad been?" he asked.
+
+"No," said the mother.
+
+"He's helping to wait at the Moon and Stars.  I seed him through
+that black tin stuff wi' holes in, on the window, wi' his sleeves
+rolled up."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the mother shortly.  "He's got no money. 
+An' he'll be satisfied if he gets his 'lowance, whether they
+give him more or not."
+
+When the light was fading, and Mrs. Morel could see no more to sew,
+she rose and went to the door.  Everywhere was the sound of excitement,
+the restlessness of the holiday, that at last infected her.  She went
+out into the side garden.  Women were coming home from the wakes,
+the children hugging a white lamb with green legs, or a wooden horse. 
+Occasionally a man lurched past, almost as full as he could carry. 
+Sometimes a good husband came along with his family, peacefully. 
+But usually the women and children were alone.  The stay-at-home mothers
+stood gossiping at the corners of the alley, as the twilight sank,
+folding their arms under their white aprons.
+
+Mrs. Morel was alone, but she was used to it.  Her son and her
+little girl slept upstairs; so, it seemed, her home was there behind her,
+fixed and stable.  But she felt wretched with the coming child. 
+The world seemed a dreary place, where nothing else would happen
+for her--at least until William grew up.  But for herself,
+nothing but this dreary endurance--till the children grew up. 
+And the children!  She could not afford to have this third. 
+She did not want it.  The father was serving beer in a public house,
+swilling himself drunk.  She despised him, and was tied to him. 
+This coming child was too much for her.  If it were not for William
+and Annie, she was sick of it, the struggle with
+poverty and ugliness and meanness.
+
+She went into the front garden, feeling too heavy to take
+herself out, yet unable to stay indoors.  The heat suffocated her. 
+And looking ahead, the prospect of her life made her feel as if she
+were buried alive.
+
+The front garden was a small square with a privet hedge. 
+There she stood, trying to soothe herself with the scent of flowers
+and the fading, beautiful evening.  Opposite her small gate was the
+stile that led uphill, under the tall hedge between the burning glow
+of the cut pastures.  The sky overhead throbbed and pulsed with light. 
+The glow sank quickly off the field; the earth and the hedges
+smoked dusk.  As it grew dark, a ruddy glare came out on the hilltop,
+and out of the glare the diminished commotion of the fair.
+
+Sometimes, down the trough of darkness formed by the path
+under the hedges, men came lurching home.  One young man lapsed
+into a run down the steep bit that ended the hill, and went with a
+crash into the stile.  Mrs. Morel shuddered.  He picked himself up,
+swearing viciously, rather pathetically, as if he thought the stile
+had wanted to hurt him.
+
+She went indoors, wondering if things were never going to alter. 
+She was beginning by now to realise that they would not.  She seemed
+so far away from her girlhood, she wondered if it were the same
+person walking heavily up the back garden at the Bottoms as had run
+so lightly up the breakwater at Sheerness ten years before.
+
+"What have I to do with it?" she said to herself.  "What have
+I to do with all this?  Even the child I am going to have!  
+It doesn't seem as if I were taken into account."
+
+Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along,
+accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself
+as it were slurred over.
+
+"I wait," Mrs. Morel said to herself--"I wait, and what I wait
+for can never come."
+
+Then she straightened the kitchen, lit the lamp, mended the fire,
+looked out the washing for the next day, and put it to soak. 
+After which she sat down to her sewing.  Through the long hours her
+needle flashed regularly through the stuff.  Occasionally she sighed,
+moving to relieve herself.  And all the time she was thinking
+how to make the most of what she had, for the children's sakes.
+
+At half-past eleven her husband came.  His cheeks were very
+red and very shiny above his black moustache.  His head nodded slightly.
+He was pleased with himself.
+
+"Oh! Oh! waitin' for me, lass?  I've bin 'elpin' Anthony, an'
+what's think he's gen me?  Nowt b'r a lousy hae'f-crown, an'
+that's ivry penny---"
+
+"He thinks you've made the rest up in beer," she said shortly.
+
+"An' I 'aven't--that I 'aven't. You b'lieve me, I've 'ad
+very little this day, I have an' all."  His voice went tender. 
+"Here, an' I browt thee a bit o' brandysnap, an' a cocoanut for th'
+children."  He laid the gingerbread and the cocoanut, a hairy object,
+on the table.  "Nay, tha niver said thankyer for nowt i' thy life,
+did ter?"
+
+As a compromise, she picked up the cocoanut and shook it,
+to see if it had any milk.
+
+"It's a good 'un, you may back yer life o' that.  I got it fra'
+Bill Hodgkisson.  'Bill,' I says, 'tha non wants them three nuts,
+does ter?  Arena ter for gi'ein' me one for my bit of a lad an'
+wench?'  'I ham, Walter, my lad,' 'e says; 'ta'e which on 'em
+ter's a mind.'  An' so I took one, an' thanked 'im.  I didn't
+like ter shake it afore 'is eyes, but 'e says, 'Tha'd better ma'e
+sure it's a good un, Walt.'  An' so, yer see, I knowed it was. 
+He's a nice chap, is Bill Hodgkisson, e's a nice chap!"
+
+"A man will part with anything so long as he's drunk,
+and you're drunk along with him," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Eh, tha mucky little 'ussy, who's drunk, I sh'd like ter know?"
+said Morel.  He was extraordinarily pleased with himself,
+because of his day's helping to wait in the Moon and Stars. 
+He chattered on.
+
+Mrs. Morel, very tired, and sick of his babble, went to bed
+as quickly as possible, while he raked the fire.
+
+Mrs. Morel came of a good old burgher family, famous independents
+who had fought with Colonel Hutchinson, and who remained stout
+Congregationalists.  Her grandfather had gone bankrupt in the lace-market
+at a time when so many lace-manufacturers were ruined in Nottingham. 
+Her father, George Coppard, was an engineer--a large, handsome,
+haughty man, proud of his fair skin and blue eyes, but more proud
+still of his integrity.  Gertrude resembled her mother in her small
+build.  But her temper, proud and unyielding, she had from the Coppards.
+
+George Coppard was bitterly galled by his own poverty. 
+He became foreman of the engineers in the dockyard at Sheerness. 
+Mrs. Morel--Gertrude--was the second daughter.  She favoured her mother,
+loved her mother best of all; but she had the Coppards' clear,
+defiant blue eyes and their broad brow.  She remembered to have
+hated her father's overbearing manner towards her gentle, humorous,
+kindly-souled mother.  She remembered running over the breakwater
+at Sheerness and finding the boat.  She remembered to have been
+petted and flattered by all the men when she had gone to the dockyard,
+for she was a delicate, rather proud child.  She remembered the funny
+old mistress, whose assistant she had become, whom she had loved to help
+in the private school.  And she still had the Bible that John Field
+had given her.  She used to walk home from chapel with John Field
+when she was nineteen.  He was the son of a well-to-do tradesman,
+had been to college in London, and was to devote himself to business.
+
+She could always recall in detail a September Sunday afternoon,
+when they had sat under the vine at the back of her father's house. 
+The sun came through the chinks of the vine-leaves and made
+beautiful patterns, like a lace scarf, falling on her and on him. 
+Some of the leaves were clean yellow, like yellow flat flowers.
+
+"Now sit still," he had cried.  "Now your hair, I don't know
+what it IS like!  It's as bright as copper and gold, as red as
+burnt copper, and it has gold threads where the sun shines on it. 
+Fancy their saying it's brown.  Your mother calls it mouse-colour."
+
+She had met his brilliant eyes, but her clear face scarcely
+showed the elation which rose within her.
+
+"But you say you don't like business," she pursued.
+
+"I don't. I hate it!" he cried hotly.
+
+"And you would like to go into the ministry," she half implored.
+
+"I should.  I should love it, if I thought I could make
+a first-rate preacher."
+
+"Then why don't you--why DON'T you?"  Her voice rang with defiance. 
+"If I were a man, nothing would stop me."
+
+She held her head erect.  He was rather timid before her.
+
+"But my father's so stiff-necked. He means to put me into
+the business, and I know he'll do it."
+
+"But if you're a MAN?" she had cried.
+
+"Being a man isn't everything," he replied, frowning with
+puzzled helplessness.
+
+Now, as she moved about her work at the Bottoms, with some
+experience of what being a man meant, she knew that it was NOT everything.
+
+At twenty, owing to her health, she had left Sheerness. 
+Her father had retired home to Nottingham.  John Field's father
+had been ruined; the son had gone as a teacher in Norwood.  She did
+not hear of him until, two years later, she made determined inquiry. 
+He had married his landlady, a woman of forty, a widow with property.
+
+And still Mrs. Morel preserved John Field's Bible.  She did
+not now believe him to be--- Well, she understood pretty well what he
+might or might not have been.  So she preserved his Bible, and kept
+his memory intact in her heart, for her own sake.  To her dying day,
+for thirty-five years, she did not speak of him.
+
+When she was twenty-three years old, she met, at a Christmas
+party, a young man from the Erewash Valley.  Morel was then
+twenty-seven years old.  He was well set-up, erect, and very smart. 
+He had wavy black hair that shone again, and a vigorous black
+beard that had never been shaved.  His cheeks were ruddy,
+and his red, moist mouth was noticeable because he laughed so often
+and so heartily.  He had that rare thing, a rich, ringing laugh. 
+Gertrude Coppard had watched him, fascinated.  He was so full of
+colour and animation, his voice ran so easily into comic grotesque,
+he was so ready and so pleasant with everybody.  Her own father
+had a rich fund of humour, but it was satiric.  This man's
+was different:  soft, non-intellectual, warm, a kind of gambolling.
+
+She herself was opposite.  She had a curious, receptive mind
+which found much pleasure and amusement in listening to other folk. 
+She was clever in leading folk to talk.  She loved ideas, and was
+considered very intellectual.  What she liked most of all was an
+argument on religion or philosophy or politics with some educated man. 
+This she did not often enjoy.  So she always had people tell her
+about themselves, finding her pleasure so.
+
+In her person she was rather small and delicate, with a
+large brow, and dropping bunches of brown silk curls.  Her blue eyes
+were very straight, honest, and searching.  She had the beautiful
+hands of the Coppards.  Her dress was always subdued.  She wore
+dark blue silk, with a peculiar silver chain of silver scallops. 
+This, and a heavy brooch of twisted gold, was her only ornament. 
+She was still perfectly intact, deeply religious, and full
+of beautiful candour.
+
+Walter Morel seemed melted away before her.  She was
+to the miner that thing of mystery and fascination, a lady. 
+When she spoke to him, it was with a southern pronunciation and a
+purity of English which thrilled him to hear.  She watched him. 
+He danced well, as if it were natural and joyous in him to dance. 
+His grandfather was a French refugee who had married an English
+barmaid--if it had been a marriage.  Gertrude Coppard watched the
+young miner as he danced, a certain subtle exultation like glamour in
+his movement, and his face the flower of his body, ruddy, with tumbled
+black hair, and laughing alike whatever partner he bowed above. 
+She thought him rather wonderful, never having met anyone like him. 
+Her father was to her the type of all men.  And George Coppard,
+proud in his bearing, handsome, and rather bitter; who preferred
+theology in reading, and who drew near in sympathy only to one man,
+the Apostle Paul; who was harsh in government, and in familiarity ironic;
+who ignored all sensuous pleasure:--he was very different from
+the miner.  Gertrude herself was rather contemptuous of dancing;
+she had not the slightest inclination towards that accomplishment,
+and had never learned even a Roger de Coverley.  She was puritan,
+like her father, high-minded, and really stern.  Therefore the dusky,
+golden softness of this man's sensuous flame of life, that flowed off
+his flesh like the flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into
+incandescence by thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her
+something wonderful, beyond her.
+
+He came and bowed above her.  A warmth radiated through her
+as if she had drunk wine.
+
+"Now do come and have this one wi' me," he said caressively. 
+"It's easy, you know.  I'm pining to see you dance."
+
+She had told him before she could not dance.  She glanced
+at his humility and smiled.  Her smile was very beautiful. 
+It moved the man so that he forgot everything.
+
+"No, I won't dance," she said softly.  Her words came clean
+and ringing.
+
+Not knowing what he was doing--he often did the right thing
+by instinct--he sat beside her, inclining reverentially.
+
+"But you mustn't miss your dance," she reproved.
+
+
+"Nay, I don't want to dance that--it's not one as I care about."
+
+"Yet you invited me to it."
+
+He laughed very heartily at this.
+
+"I never thought o' that.  Tha'rt not long in taking the curl
+out of me."
+
+It was her turn to laugh quickly.
+
+"You don't look as if you'd come much uncurled," she said.
+
+"I'm like a pig's tail, I curl because I canna help it,"
+he laughed, rather boisterously.
+
+"And you are a miner!" she exclaimed in surprise.
+
+"Yes. I went down when I was ten."
+
+She looked at him in wondering dismay.
+
+"When you were ten!  And wasn't it very hard?" she asked.
+
+"You soon get used to it.  You live like th' mice, an' you pop
+out at night to see what's going on."
+
+"It makes me feel blind," she frowned.
+
+"Like a moudiwarp!" he laughed.  "Yi, an' there's some chaps
+as does go round like moudiwarps."  He thrust his face forward
+in the blind, snout-like way of a mole, seeming to sniff and
+peer for direction.  "They dun though!" he protested naively. 
+"Tha niver seed such a way they get in.  But tha mun let me ta'e
+thee down some time, an' tha can see for thysen."
+
+She looked at him, startled.  This was a new tract of life
+suddenly opened before her.  She realised the life of the miners,
+hundreds of them toiling below earth and coming up at evening. 
+He seemed to her noble.  He risked his life daily, and with gaiety. 
+She looked at him, with a touch of appeal in her pure humility.
+
+"Shouldn't ter like it?" he asked tenderly.  "'Appen not,
+it 'ud dirty thee."
+
+She had never been "thee'd" and "thou'd" before.
+
+The next Christmas they were married, and for three months
+she was perfectly happy:  for six months she was very happy.
+
+He had signed the pledge, and wore the blue ribbon of a
+tee-totaller:  he was nothing if not showy.  They lived, she thought,
+in his own house.  It was small, but convenient enough, and quite
+nicely furnished, with solid, worthy stuff that suited her honest soul. 
+The women, her neighbours, were rather foreign to her, and Morel's
+mother and sisters were apt to sneer at her ladylike ways.
+But she could perfectly well live by herself, so long as she
+had her husband close.
+
+Sometimes, when she herself wearied of love-talk, she tried
+to open her heart seriously to him.  She saw him listen deferentially,
+but without understanding.  This killed her efforts at a finer intimacy,
+and she had flashes of fear.  Sometimes he was restless of an evening: 
+it was not enough for him just to be near her, she realised. 
+She was glad when he set himself to little jobs.
+
+He was a remarkably handy man--could make or mend anything. 
+So she would say:
+
+"I do like that coal-rake of your mother's--it is small and natty."
+
+"Does ter, my wench?  Well, I made that, so I can make thee
+one! "
+
+"What! why, it's a steel one!"
+
+"An' what if it is!  Tha s'lt ha'e one very similar, if not
+exactly same."
+
+She did not mind the mess, nor the hammering and noise. 
+He was busy and happy.
+
+But in the seventh month, when she was brushing his Sunday coat,
+she felt papers in the breast pocket, and, seized with a sudden curiosity,
+took them out to read.  He very rarely wore the frock-coat he was
+married in:  and it had not occurred to her before to feel curious
+concerning the papers.  They were the bills of the household furniture,
+still unpaid.
+
+"Look here," she said at night, after he was washed and had
+had his dinner.  "I found these in the pocket of your wedding-coat.
+Haven't you settled the bills yet?"
+
+"No. I haven't had a chance."
+
+"But you told me all was paid.  I had better go into Nottingham
+on Saturday and settle them.  I don't like sitting on another man's
+chairs and eating from an unpaid table."
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"I can have your bank-book, can't I?"
+
+"Tha can ha'e it, for what good it'll be to thee."
+
+"I thought---" she began.  He had told her he had a good bit of
+money left over.  But she realised it was no use asking questions. 
+She sat rigid with bitterness and indignation.
+
+The next day she went down to see his mother.
+
+"Didn't you buy the furniture for Walter?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I did," tartly retorted the elder woman.
+
+"And how much did he give you to pay for it?"
+
+The elder woman was stung with fine indignation.
+
+"Eighty pound, if you're so keen on knowin'," she replied.
+
+"Eighty pounds!  But there are forty-two pounds still owing!"
+
+"I can't help that."
+
+"But where has it all gone?"
+
+"You'll find all the papers, I think, if you look--beside ten
+pound as he owed me, an' six pound as the wedding cost down here."
+
+"Six pounds!" echoed Gertrude Morel.  It seemed to her
+monstrous that, after her own father had paid so heavily
+for her wedding, six pounds more should have been squandered
+in eating and drinking at Walter's parents' house, at his expense.
+
+"And how much has he sunk in his houses?" she asked.
+
+"His houses--which houses?"
+
+Gertrude Morel went white to the lips.  He had told her
+the house he lived in, and the next one, was his own.
+
+"I thought the house we live in---" she began.
+
+"They're my houses, those two," said the mother-in-law. "And
+not clear either.  It's as much as I can do to keep the mortgage
+interest paid."
+
+Gertrude sat white and silent.  She was her father now.
+
+"Then we ought to be paying you rent," she said coldly.
+
+"Walter is paying me rent," replied the mother.
+
+"And what rent?" asked Gertrude.
+
+"Six and six a week," retorted the mother.
+
+It was more than the house was worth.  Gertrude held her
+head erect, looked straight before her.
+
+"It is lucky to be you," said the elder woman, bitingly,
+"to have a husband as takes all the worry of the money, and leaves
+you a free hand."
+
+The young wife was silent.
+
+She said very little to her husband, but her manner had
+changed towards him.  Something in her proud, honourable soul
+had crystallised out hard as rock.
+
+When October came in, she thought only of Christmas.  Two years ago,
+at Christmas, she had met him.  Last Christmas she had married him. 
+This Christmas she would bear him a child.
+
+"You don't dance yourself, do you, missis?" asked her
+nearest neighbour, in October, when there was great talk
+of opening a dancing-class over the Brick and Tile Inn at Bestwood.
+
+"No--I never had the least inclination to," Mrs. Morel replied.
+
+"Fancy! An' how funny as you should ha' married your Mester. 
+You know he's quite a famous one for dancing."
+
+"I didn't know he was famous," laughed Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Yea, he is though!  Why, he ran that dancing-class in the Miners'
+Arms club-room for over five year."
+
+"Did he?"
+
+"Yes, he did."  The other woman was defiant.  "An' it was
+thronged every Tuesday, and Thursday, an' Sat'day--an' there WAS
+carryin's-on, accordin' to all accounts."
+
+This kind of thing was gall and bitterness to Mrs. Morel,
+and she had a fair share of it.  The women did not spare her, at first;
+for she was superior, though she could not help it.
+
+He began to be rather late in coming home.
+
+"They're working very late now, aren't they?" she said to her
+washer-woman.
+
+"No later than they allers do, I don't think.  But they stop to
+have their pint at Ellen's, an' they get talkin', an' there you are! 
+Dinner stone cold--an' it serves 'em right."
+
+"But Mr. Morel does not take any drink."
+
+The woman dropped the clothes, looked at Mrs. Morel, then went
+on with her work, saying nothing.
+
+Gertrude Morel was very ill when the boy was born. 
+Morel was good to her, as good as gold.  But she felt very lonely,
+miles away from her own people.  She felt lonely with him now,
+and his presence only made it more intense.
+
+The boy was small and frail at first, but he came on quickly. 
+He was a beautiful child, with dark gold ringlets, and dark-blue
+eyes which changed gradually to a clear grey.  His mother loved
+him passionately.  He came just when her own bitterness of
+disillusion was hardest to bear; when her faith in life was shaken,
+and her soul felt dreary and lonely.  She made much of the child,
+and the father was jealous.
+
+At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband.  She turned to
+the child; she turned from the father.  He had begun to neglect her;
+the novelty of his own home was gone.  He had no grit, she said
+bitterly to herself.  What he felt just at the minute, that was all to him.
+He could not abide by anything.  There was nothing at the back
+of all his show.
+
+There began a battle between the husband and wife--a fearful,
+bloody battle that ended only with the death of one.  She fought
+to make him undertake his own responsibilities, to make him fulfill
+his obligations.  But he was too different from her.  His nature
+was purely sensuous, and she strove to make him moral, religious. 
+She tried to force him to face things.  He could not endure it--it
+drove him out of his mind.
+
+While the baby was still tiny, the father's temper had become
+so irritable that it was not to be trusted.  The child had only to
+give a little trouble when the man began to bully.  A little more,
+and the hard hands of the collier hit the baby.  Then Mrs. Morel
+loathed her husband, loathed him for days; and he went out and drank;
+and she cared very little what he did.  Only, on his return,
+she scathed him with her satire.
+
+The estrangement between them caused him, knowingly or unknowingly,
+grossly to offend her where he would not have done.
+
+William was only one year old, and his mother was proud of him,
+he was so pretty.  She was not well off now, but her sisters kept
+the boy in clothes.  Then, with his little white hat curled with an
+ostrich feather, and his white coat, he was a joy to her, the twining
+wisps of hair clustering round his head.  Mrs. Morel lay listening,
+one Sunday morning, to the chatter of the father and child downstairs. 
+Then she dozed off.  When she came downstairs, a great fire glowed
+in the grate, the room was hot, the breakfast was roughly laid,
+and seated in his armchair, against the chimney-piece, sat Morel,
+rather timid; and standing between his legs, the child--cropped
+like a sheep, with such an odd round poll--looking wondering at her;
+and on a newspaper spread out upon the hearthrug, a myriad of
+crescent-shaped curls, like the petals of a marigold scattered in the
+reddening firelight.
+
+Mrs. Morel stood still.  It was her first baby.  She went
+very white, and was unable to speak.
+
+"What dost think o' 'im?"  Morel laughed uneasily.
+
+She gripped her two fists, lifted them, and came forward. 
+Morel shrank back.
+
+"I could kill you, I could!" she said.  She choked with rage,
+her two fists uplifted.
+
+"Yer non want ter make a wench on 'im," Morel said, in a
+frightened tone, bending his head to shield his eyes from hers. 
+His attempt at laughter had vanished.
+
+The mother looked down at the jagged, close-clipped head of
+her child.  She put her hands on his hair, and stroked and fondled
+his head.
+
+"Oh--my boy!" she faltered.  Her lip trembled, her face broke,
+and, snatching up the child, she buried her face in his shoulder
+and cried painfully.  She was one of those women who cannot cry;
+whom it hurts as it hurts a man.  It was like ripping something
+out of her, her sobbing.
+
+Morel sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped
+together till the knuckles were white.  He gazed in the fire,
+feeling almost stunned, as if he could not breathe.
+
+Presently she came to an end, soothed the child and cleared away
+the breakfast-table. She left the newspaper, littered with curls,
+spread upon the hearthrug.  At last her husband gathered it up and put
+it at the back of the fire.  She went about her work with closed
+mouth and very quiet.  Morel was subdued.  He crept about wretchedly,
+and his meals were a misery that day.  She spoke to him civilly,
+and never alluded to what he had done.  But he felt something final
+had happened.
+
+Afterwards she said she had been silly, that the boy's hair
+would have had to be cut, sooner or later.  In the end, she even
+brought herself to say to her husband it was just as well he had
+played barber when he did.  But she knew, and Morel knew, that that
+act had caused something momentous to take place in her soul. 
+She remembered the scene all her life, as one in which she had
+suffered the most intensely.
+
+This act of masculine clumsiness was the spear through the side of
+her love for Morel.  Before, while she had striven against him bitterly,
+she had fretted after him, as if he had gone astray from her. 
+Now she ceased to fret for his love:  he was an outsider to her. 
+This made life much more bearable.
+
+Nevertheless, she still continued to strive with him.  She still
+had her high moral sense, inherited from generations of Puritans. 
+It was now a religious instinct, and she was almost a fanatic
+with him, because she loved him, or had loved him.  If he sinned,
+she tortured him.  If he drank, and lied, was often a poltroon,
+sometimes a knave, she wielded the lash unmercifully.
+
+The pity was, she was too much his opposite.  She could not be
+content with the little he might be; she would have him the much that
+he ought to be.  So, in seeking to make him nobler than he could be,
+she destroyed him.  She injured and hurt and scarred herself,
+but she lost none of her worth.  She also had the children.
+
+He drank rather heavily, though not more than many miners,
+and always beer, so that whilst his health was affected, it was
+never injured.  The week-end was his chief carouse.  He sat in
+the Miners' Arms until turning-out time every Friday, every Saturday,
+and every Sunday evening.  On Monday and Tuesday he had to get up
+and reluctantly leave towards ten o'clock. Sometimes he stayed at home
+on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, or was only out for an hour. 
+He practically never had to miss work owing to his drinking.
+
+But although he was very steady at work, his wages fell off. 
+He was blab-mouthed, a tongue-wagger. Authority was hateful to him,
+therefore he could only abuse the pit-managers. He would say,
+in the Palmerston:
+
+"Th' gaffer come down to our stall this morning, an' 'e says,
+'You know, Walter, this 'ere'll not do.  What about these props?' 
+An' I says to him, 'Why, what art talkin' about?  What d'st
+mean about th' props?'  'It'll never do, this 'ere,' 'e says. 
+'You'll be havin' th' roof in, one o' these days.'  An' I says,
+'Tha'd better stan' on a bit o' clunch, then, an' hold it up wi'
+thy 'ead.'  So 'e wor that mad, 'e cossed an' 'e swore, an'
+t'other chaps they did laugh."  Morel was a good mimic.  He imitated
+the manager's fat, squeaky voice, with its attempt at good English.
+
+"'I shan't have it, Walter.  Who knows more about it, me or you?' 
+So I says, 'I've niver fun out how much tha' knows, Alfred. 
+It'll 'appen carry thee ter bed an' back."'
+
+So Morel would go on to the amusement of his boon companions. 
+And some of this would be true.  The pit-manager was not an
+educated man.  He had been a boy along with Morel, so that,
+while the two disliked each other, they more or less took each
+other for granted.  But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive
+the butty these public-house sayings.  Consequently, although Morel
+was a good miner, sometimes earning as much as five pounds a week
+when he married, he came gradually to have worse and worse stalls,
+where the coal was thin, and hard to get, and unprofitable.
+
+Also, in summer, the pits are slack.  Often, on bright sunny
+mornings, the men are seen trooping home again at ten, eleven, or twelve
+o'clock. No empty trucks stand at the pit-mouth. The women on the
+hillside look across as they shake the hearthrug against the fence,
+and count the wagons the engine is taking along the line up the valley. 
+And the children, as they come from school at dinner-time, looking
+down the fields and seeing the wheels on the headstocks standing, say:
+
+"Minton's knocked off.  My dad'll be at home."
+
+And there is a sort of shadow over all, women and children
+and men, because money will be short at the end of the week.
+
+Morel was supposed to give his wife thirty shillings a week,
+to provide everything--rent, food, clothes, clubs, insurance, doctors. 
+Occasionally, if he were flush, he gave her thirty-five. But
+these occasions by no means balanced those when he gave her
+twenty-five. In winter, with a decent stall, the miner might
+earn fifty or fifty-five shillings a week.  Then he was happy. 
+On Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, he spent royally, getting rid
+of his sovereign or thereabouts.  And out of so much, he scarcely
+spared the children an extra penny or bought them a pound of apples. 
+It all went in drink.  In the bad times, matters were more worrying,
+but he was not so often drunk, so that Mrs. Morel used to say:
+
+"I'm not sure I wouldn't rather be short, for when he's flush,
+there isn't a minute of peace."
+
+If he earned forty shillings he kept ten; from thirty-five he
+kept five; from thirty-two he kept four; from twenty-eight he kept three;
+from twenty-four he kept two; from twenty he kept one-and-six;
+from eighteen he kept a shilling; from sixteen he kept sixpence. 
+He never saved a penny, and he gave his wife no opportunity
+of saving; instead, she had occasionally to pay his debts;
+not public-house debts, for those never were passed on to the women,
+but debts when he had bought a canary, or a fancy walking-stick.
+
+At the wakes time Morel was working badly, and 
+Mrs. Morel was trying to save against her confinement.
+So it galled her bitterly to think he should be out
+taking his pleasure and spending money, whilst she remained
+at home, harassed.  There were two days' holiday.  On the Tuesday
+morning Morel rose early.  He was in good spirits.  Quite early,
+before six o'clock, she heard him whistling away to himself downstairs. 
+He had a pleasant way of whistling, lively and musical. 
+He nearly always whistled hymns.  He had been a choir-boy with
+a beautiful voice, and had taken solos in Southwell cathedral. 
+His morning whistling alone betrayed it.
+
+His wife lay listening to him tinkering away in the garden,
+his whistling ringing out as he sawed and hammered away.  It always
+gave her a sense of warmth and peace to hear him thus as she lay
+in bed, the children not yet awake, in the bright early morning,
+happy in his man's fashion.
+
+At nine o'clock, while the children with bare legs and feet
+were sitting playing on the sofa, and the mother was washing up,
+he came in from his carpentry, his sleeves rolled up, his waistcoat
+hanging open.  He was still a good-looking man, with black,
+wavy hair, and a large black moustache.  His face was perhaps too
+much inflamed, and there was about him a look almost of peevishness. 
+But now he was jolly.  He went straight to the sink where his wife
+was washing up.
+
+"What, are thee there!" he said boisterously.  "Sluthe off an'
+let me wesh mysen."
+
+"You may wait till I've finished," said his wife.
+
+"Oh, mun I?  An' what if I shonna?"
+
+This good-humoured threat amused Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Then you can go and wash yourself in the soft-water tub."
+
+"Ha!  I can' an' a', tha mucky little 'ussy."
+
+With which he stood watching her a moment, then went away
+to wait for her.
+
+When he chose he could still make himself again a real gallant. 
+Usually he preferred to go out with a scarf round his neck. 
+Now, however, he made a toilet.  There seemed so much gusto in the way
+he puffed and swilled as he washed himself, so much alacrity with
+which he hurried to the mirror in the kitchen, and, bending because
+it was too low for him, scrupulously parted his wet black hair,
+that it irritated Mrs. Morel.  He put on a turn-down collar,
+a black bow, and wore his Sunday tail-coat. As such, he looked
+spruce, and what his clothes would not do, his instinct for making
+the most of his good looks would.
+
+At half-past nine Jerry Purdy came to call for his pal. 
+Jerry was Morel's bosom friend, and Mrs. Morel disliked him. 
+He was a tall, thin man, with a rather foxy face, the kind
+of face that seems to lack eyelashes.  He walked with a stiff,
+brittle dignity, as if his head were on a wooden spring.  His nature
+was cold and shrewd.  Generous where he intended to be generous,
+he seemed to be very fond of Morel, and more or less to take charge
+of him.
+
+Mrs. Morel hated him.  She had known his wife, who had died
+of consumption, and who had, at the end, conceived such a violent
+dislike of her husband, that if he came into her room it caused
+her haemorrhage.  None of which Jerry had seemed to mind.  And now
+his eldest daughter, a girl of fifteen, kept a poor house for him,
+and looked after the two younger children.
+
+"A mean, wizzen-hearted stick!"  Mrs. Morel said of him.
+
+"I've never known Jerry mean in MY life," protested Morel. 
+"A opener-handed and more freer chap you couldn't find anywhere,
+accordin' to my knowledge."
+
+"Open-handed to you," retorted Mrs. Morel.  "But his fist
+is shut tight enough to his children, poor things."
+
+"Poor things!  And what for are they poor things, I should
+like to know."
+
+But Mrs. Morel would not be appeased on Jerry's score.
+
+The subject of argument was seen, craning his thin neck
+over the scullery curtain.  He caught Mrs. Morel's eye.
+
+"Mornin', missis!  Mester in?"
+
+"Yes--he is."
+
+Jerry entered unasked, and stood by the kitchen doorway. 
+He was not invited to sit down, but stood there, coolly asserting
+the rights of men and husbands.
+
+"A nice day," he said to Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Grand out this morning--grand for a walk."
+
+"Do you mean YOU'RE going for a walk?" she asked.
+
+"Yes.  We mean walkin' to Nottingham," he replied.
+
+"H'm!"
+
+The two men greeted each other, both glad:  Jerry, however,
+full of assurance, Morel rather subdued, afraid to seem too jubilant in
+presence of his wife.  But he laced his boots quickly, with spirit. 
+They were going for a ten-mile walk across the fields to Nottingham. 
+Climbing the hillside from the Bottoms, they mounted gaily into
+the morning.  At the Moon and Stars they had their first drink,
+then on to the Old Spot.  Then a long five miles of drought to carry
+them into Bulwell to a glorious pint of bitter.  But they stayed
+in a field with some haymakers whose gallon bottle was full, so that,
+when they came in sight of the city, Morel was sleepy.  The town
+spread upwards before them, smoking vaguely in the midday glare,
+fridging the crest away to the south with spires and factory bulks
+and chimneys.  In the last field Morel lay down under an oak tree
+and slept soundly for over an hour.  When he rose to go forward he
+felt queer.
+
+The two had dinner in the Meadows, with Jerry's sister,
+then repaired to the Punch Bowl, where they mixed in the excitement
+of pigeon-racing. Morel never in his life played cards, considering them
+as having some occult, malevolent power--"the devil's pictures,"
+he called them!  But he was a master of skittles and of dominoes. 
+He took a challenge from a Newark man, on skittles.  All the men in
+the old, long bar took sides, betting either one way or the other. 
+Morel took off his coat.  Jerry held the hat containing the money. 
+The men at the tables watched.  Some stood with their mugs in
+their hands.  Morel felt his big wooden ball carefully, then launched it. 
+He played havoc among the nine-pins, and won half a crown,
+which restored him to solvency.
+
+By seven o'clock the two were in good condition.  They caught
+the 7.30 train home.
+
+In the afternoon the Bottoms was intolerable.  Every inhabitant
+remaining was out of doors.  The women, in twos and threes,
+bareheaded and in white aprons, gossiped in the alley between the blocks. 
+Men, having a rest between drinks, sat on their heels and talked. 
+The place smelled stale; the slate roofs glistered in the arid heat.
+
+Mrs. Morel took the little girl down to the brook in the meadows,
+which were not more than two hundred yards away.  The water ran
+quickly over stones and broken pots.  Mother and child leaned on
+the rail of the old sheep-bridge, watching.  Up at the dipping-hole,
+at the other end of the meadow, Mrs. Morel could see the naked
+forms of boys flashing round the deep yellow water,
+or an occasional bright figure dart glittering over the blackish
+stagnant meadow.  She knew William was at the dipping-hole,
+and it was the dread of her life lest he should get drowned. 
+Annie played under the tall old hedge, picking up alder cones,
+that she called currants.  The child required much attention,
+and the flies were teasing.
+
+The children were put to bed at seven o'clock. Then she
+worked awhile.
+
+When Walter Morel and Jerry arrived at Bestwood they felt
+a load off their minds; a railway journey no longer impended,
+so they could put the finishing touches to a glorious day. 
+They entered the Nelson with the satisfaction of returned travellers.
+
+The next day was a work-day, and the thought of it put a damper
+on the men's spirits.  Most of them, moreover, had spent their money. 
+Some were already rolling dismally home, to sleep in preparation
+for the morrow.  Mrs. Morel, listening to their mournful singing,
+went indoors.  Nine o'clock passed, and ten, and still "the pair"
+had not returned.  On a doorstep somewhere a man was singing loudly,
+in a drawl:  "Lead, kindly Light."  Mrs. Morel was always indignant
+with the drunken men that they must sing that hymn when they
+got maudlin.
+
+"As if 'Genevieve' weren't good enough," she said.
+
+The kitchen was full of the scent of boiled herbs and hops. 
+On the hob a large black saucepan steamed slowly.  Mrs. Morel took
+a panchion, a great bowl of thick red earth, streamed a heap of white
+sugar into the bottom, and then, straining herself to the weight,
+was pouring in the liquor.
+
+Just then Morel came in.  He had been very jolly in the Nelson,
+but coming home had grown irritable.  He had not quite got over the
+feeling of irritability and pain, after having slept on the ground
+when he was so hot; and a bad conscience afflicted him as he neared
+the house.  He did not know he was angry.  But when the garden gate
+resisted his attempts to open it, he kicked it and broke the latch. 
+He entered just as Mrs. Morel was pouring the infusion of herbs out
+of the saucepan.  Swaying slightly, he lurched against the table. 
+The boiling liquor pitched.  Mrs. Morel started back.
+
+"Good gracious," she cried, "coming home in his drunkenness!"
+
+"Comin' home in his what?" he snarled, his hat over his eye.
+
+Suddenly her blood rose in a jet.
+
+"Say you're NOT drunk!" she flashed.
+
+She had put down her saucepan, and was stirring the sugar
+into the beer.  He dropped his two hands heavily on the table,
+and thrust his face forwards at her.
+
+"'Say you're not drunk,'" he repeated.  "Why, nobody
+but a nasty little bitch like you 'ud 'ave such a thought."
+
+He thrust his face forward at her.
+
+"There's money to bezzle with, if there's money for nothing else."
+
+"I've not spent a two-shillin' bit this day," he said.
+
+"You don't get as drunk as a lord on nothing," she replied. 
+"And," she cried, flashing into sudden fury, "if you've been sponging
+on your beloved Jerry, why, let him look after his children,
+for they need it."
+
+"It's a lie, it's a lie.  Shut your face, woman."
+
+They were now at battle-pitch. Each forgot everything save
+the hatred of the other and the battle between them.  She was fiery
+and furious as he.  They went on till he called her a liar.
+
+"No," she cried, starting up, scarce able to breathe. 
+"Don't call me that--you, the most despicable liar that ever walked
+in shoe-leather." She forced the last words out of suffocated lungs.
+
+"You're a liar!" he yelled, banging the table with his fist. 
+"You're a liar, you're a liar."
+
+She stiffened herself, with clenched fists.
+
+"The house is filthy with you," she cried.
+
+"Then get out on it--it's mine.  Get out on it!" he shouted. 
+"It's me as brings th' money whoam, not thee.  It's my house, not thine. 
+Then ger out on't--ger out on't!"
+
+"And I would," she cried, suddenly shaken into tears
+of impotence.  "Ah, wouldn't I, wouldn't I have gone long ago,
+but for those children.  Ay, haven't I repented not going years ago,
+when I'd only the one"--suddenly drying into rage.  "Do you think
+it's for YOU I stop--do you think I'd stop one minute for YOU?"
+
+"Go, then," he shouted, beside himself.  "Go!"
+
+"No!" She faced round.  "No," she cried loudly, "you shan't
+have it ALL your own way; you shan't do ALL you like.  I've got
+those children to see to.  My word," she laughed, "I should look
+well to leave them to you."
+
+"Go," he cried thickly, lifting his fist.  He was afraid
+of her.  "Go!"
+
+"I should be only too glad.  I should laugh, laugh, my lord,
+if I could get away from you," she replied.
+
+He came up to her, his red face, with its bloodshot eyes,
+thrust forward, and gripped her arms.  She cried in fear of him,
+struggled to be free.  Coming slightly to himself, panting, he pushed
+her roughly to the outer door, and thrust her forth, slotting the
+bolt behind her with a bang.  Then he went back into the kitchen,
+dropped into his armchair, his head, bursting full of blood,
+sinking between his knees.  Thus he dipped gradually into a stupor,
+from exhaustion and intoxication.
+
+The moon was high and magnificent in the August night. 
+Mrs. Morel, seared with passion, shivered to find herself out there
+in a great white light, that fell cold on her, and gave a shock
+to her inflamed soul.  She stood for a few moments helplessly
+staring at the glistening great rhubarb leaves near the door. 
+Then she got the air into her breast.  She walked down the garden path,
+trembling in every limb, while the child boiled within her. 
+For a while she could not control her consciousness; mechanically she
+went over the last scene, then over it again, certain phrases,
+certain moments coming each time like a brand red-hot down on
+her soul; and each time she enacted again the past hour, each time
+the brand came down at the same points, till the mark was burnt in,
+and the pain burnt out, and at last she came to herself. 
+She must have been half an hour in this delirious condition. 
+Then the presence of the night came again to her.  She glanced round
+in fear.  She had wandered to the side garden, where she was walking
+up and down the path beside the currant bushes under the long wall. 
+The garden was a narrow strip, bounded from the road, that cut
+transversely between the blocks, by a thick thorn hedge.
+
+She hurried out of the side garden to the front, where she
+could stand as if in an immense gulf of white light, the moon
+streaming high in face of her, the moonlight standing up from the
+hills in front, and filling the valley where the Bottoms crouched,
+almost blindingly.  There, panting and half weeping in reaction
+from the stress, she murmured to herself over and over again: 
+"The nuisance! the nuisance!"
+
+She became aware of something about her.  With an effort she
+roused herself to see what it was that penetrated her consciousness. 
+The tall white lilies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air was
+charged with their perfume, as with a presence.  Mrs. Morel gasped
+slightly in fear.  She touched the big, pallid flowers on their petals,
+then shivered.  They seemed to be stretching in the moonlight. 
+She put her hand into one white bin:  the gold scarcely showed
+on her fingers by moonlight.  She bent down to look at the binful
+of yellow pollen; but it only appeared dusky.  Then she drank a deep
+draught of the scent.  It almost made her dizzy.
+
+Mrs. Morel leaned on the garden gate, looking out, and she
+lost herself awhile.  She did not know what she thought. 
+Except for a slight feeling of sickness, and her consciousness in
+the child, herself melted out like scent into the shiny, pale air. 
+After a time the child, too, melted with her in the mixing-pot
+of moonlight, and she rested with the hills and lilies and houses,
+all swum together in a kind of swoon.
+
+When she came to herself she was tired for sleep.  Languidly she
+looked about her; the clumps of white phlox seemed like bushes spread
+with linen; a moth ricochetted over them, and right across the garden. 
+Following it with her eye roused her.  A few whiffs of the raw,
+strong scent of phlox invigorated her.  She passed along the path,
+hesitating at the white rose-bush. It smelled sweet and simple. 
+She touched the white ruffles of the roses.  Their fresh scent
+and cool, soft leaves reminded her of the morning-time and sunshine. 
+She was very fond of them.  But she was tired, and wanted to sleep. 
+In the mysterious out-of-doors she felt forlorn.
+
+There was no noise anywhere.  Evidently the children had not
+been wakened, or had gone to sleep again.  A train, three miles away,
+roared across the valley.  The night was very large, and very strange,
+stretching its hoary distances infinitely.  And out of the silver-grey
+fog of darkness came sounds vague and hoarse:  a corncrake not
+far off, sound of a train like a sigh, and distant shouts of men.
+
+Her quietened heart beginning to beat quickly again, she hurried
+down the side garden to the back of the house.  Softly she lifted
+the latch; the door was still bolted, and hard against her. 
+She rapped gently, waited, then rapped again.  She must not rouse
+the children, nor the neighbours.  He must be asleep, and he would
+not wake easily.  Her heart began to burn to be indoors.  She clung
+to the door-handle. Now it was cold; she would take a chill,
+and in her present condition!
+
+Putting her apron over her head and her arms, she hurried again
+to the side garden, to the window of the kitchen.  Leaning on the sill,
+she could just see, under the blind, her husband's arms spread
+out on the table, and his black head on the board.  He was sleeping
+with his face lying on the table.  Something in his attitude made
+her feel tired of things.  The lamp was burning smokily; she could
+tell by the copper colour of the light.  She tapped at the window
+more and more noisily.  Almost it seemed as if the glass would break. 
+Still he did not wake up.
+
+After vain efforts, she began to shiver, partly from contact with
+the stone, and from exhaustion.  Fearful always for the unborn child,
+she wondered what she could do for warmth.  She went down to the
+coal-house, where there was an old hearthrug she had carried out for
+the rag-man the day before.  This she wrapped over her shoulders. 
+It was warm, if grimy.  Then she walked up and down the garden path,
+peeping every now and then under the blind, knocking, and telling
+herself that in the end the very strain of his position must wake him.
+
+At last, after about an hour, she rapped long and low at
+the window.  Gradually the sound penetrated to him.  When, in despair,
+she had ceased to tap, she saw him stir, then lift his face blindly. 
+The labouring of his heart hurt him into consciousness.  She rapped
+imperatively at the window.  He started awake.  Instantly she saw his
+fists set and his eyes glare.  He had not a grain of physical fear. 
+If it had been twenty burglars, he would have gone blindly for them. 
+He glared round, bewildered, but prepared to fight.
+
+"Open the door, Walter," she said coldly.
+
+His hands relaxed.  It dawned on him what he had done. 
+His head dropped, sullen and dogged.  She saw him hurry to the door,
+heard the bolt chock.  He tried the latch.  It opened--and there
+stood the silver-grey night, fearful to him, after the tawny light
+of the lamp.  He hurried back.
+
+When Mrs. Morel entered, she saw him almost
+running through the door to the stairs.  He had ripped
+his collar off his neck in his haste to be gone ere she
+came in, and there it lay with bursten button-holes. It made her angry.
+
+She warmed and soothed herself.  In her weariness forgetting
+everything, she moved about at the little tasks that remained to be done,
+set his breakfast, rinsed his pit-bottle, put his pit-clothes on the
+hearth to warm, set his pit-boots beside them, put him out a clean
+scarf and snap-bag and two apples, raked the fire, and went to bed. 
+He was already dead asleep.  His narrow black eyebrows were drawn
+up in a sort of peevish misery into his forehead while his cheeks'
+down-strokes, and his sulky mouth, seemed to be saying:  "I don't
+care who you are nor what you are, I SHALL have my own way."
+
+Mrs. Morel knew him too well to look at him.  As she unfastened
+her brooch at the mirror, she smiled faintly to see her face
+all smeared with the yellow dust of lilies.  She brushed it off,
+and at last lay down.  For some time her mind continued snapping
+and jetting sparks, but she was asleep before her husband awoke
+from the first sleep of his drunkenness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BIRTH OF PAUL, AND ANOTHER BATTLE
+
+AFTER such a scene as the last, Walter Morel was for some days abashed
+and ashamed, but he soon regained his old bullying indifference. 
+Yet there was a slight shrinking, a diminishing in his assurance. 
+Physically even, he shrank, and his fine full presence waned. 
+He never grew in the least stout, so that, as he sank from his erect,
+assertive bearing, his physique seemed to contract along with his pride
+and moral strength.
+
+But now he realised how hard it was for his wife to drag
+about at her work, and, his sympathy quickened by penitence,
+hastened forward with his help.  He came straight home from the pit,
+and stayed in at evening till Friday, and then he could not remain
+at home.  But he was back again by ten o'clock, almost quite sober.
+
+He always made his own breakfast.  Being a man who rose early
+and had plenty of time he did not, as some miners do, drag his wife
+out of bed at six o'clock. At five, sometimes earlier, he woke,
+got straight out of bed, and went downstairs.  When she could not sleep,
+his wife lay waiting for this time, as for a period of peace.
+The only real rest seemed to be when he was out of the house.
+
+He went downstairs in his shirt and then struggled into his
+pit-trousers, which were left on the hearth to warm all night. 
+There was always a fire, because Mrs. Morel raked.  And the first
+sound in the house was the bang, bang of the poker against the raker,
+as Morel smashed the remainder of the coal to make the kettle,
+which was filled and left on the hob, finally boil.  His cup and knife
+and fork, all he wanted except just the food, was laid ready on
+the table on a newspaper.  Then he got his breakfast, made the tea,
+packed the bottom of the doors with rugs to shut out the draught,
+piled a big fire, and sat down to an hour of joy.  He toasted
+his bacon on a fork and caught the drops of fat on his bread;
+then he put the rasher on his thick slice of bread, and cut off chunks
+with a clasp-knife, poured his tea into his saucer, and was happy. 
+With his family about, meals were never so pleasant.  He loathed
+a fork:  it is a modern introduction which has still scarcely reached
+common people.  What Morel preferred was a clasp-knife. Then,
+in solitude, he ate and drank, often sitting, in cold weather,
+on a little stool with his back to the warm chimney-piece, his food
+on the fender, his cup on the hearth.  And then he read the last
+night's newspaper--what of it he could--spelling it over laboriously. 
+He preferred to keep the blinds down and the candle lit even when it
+was daylight; it was the habit of the mine.
+
+At a quarter to six he rose, cut two thick slices of bread
+and butter, and put them in the white calico snap-bag. He filled his
+tin bottle with tea.  Cold tea without milk or sugar was the drink
+he preferred for the pit.  Then he pulled off his shirt, and put
+on his pit-singlet, a vest of thick flannel cut low round the neck,
+and with short sleeves like a chemise.
+
+Then he went upstairs to his wife with a cup of tea because she
+was ill, and because it occurred to him.
+
+"I've brought thee a cup o' tea, lass," he said.
+
+"Well, you needn't, for you know I don't like it," she replied.
+
+"Drink it up; it'll pop thee off to sleep again."
+
+She accepted the tea.  It pleased him to see her take it
+and sip it.
+
+"I'll back my life there's no sugar in," she said.
+
+"Yi--there's one big 'un," he replied, injured.
+
+"It's a wonder," she said, sipping again.
+
+She had a winsome face when her hair was loose.  He loved her
+to grumble at him in this manner.  He looked at her again, and went,
+without any sort of leave-taking. He never took more than two slices
+of bread and butter to eat in the pit, so an apple or an orange was
+a treat to him.  He always liked it when she put one out for him. 
+He tied a scarf round his neck, put on his great, heavy boots, his coat,
+with the big pocket, that carried his snap-bag and his bottle of tea,
+and went forth into the fresh morning air, closing, without locking,
+the door behind him.  He loved the early morning, and the walk across
+the fields.  So he appeared at the pit-top, often with a stalk
+from the hedge between his teeth, which he chewed all day to keep
+his mouth moist, down the mine, feeling quite as happy as when he
+was in the field.
+
+Later, when the time for the baby grew nearer, he would
+bustle round in his slovenly fashion, poking out the ashes,
+rubbing the fireplace, sweeping the house before he went to work. 
+Then, feeling very self-righteous, he went upstairs.
+
+"Now I'm cleaned up for thee:  tha's no 'casions ter stir
+a peg all day, but sit and read thy books."
+
+Which made her laugh, in spite of her indignation.
+
+"And the dinner cooks itself?" she answered.
+
+"Eh, I know nowt about th' dinner."
+
+"You'd know if there weren't any."
+
+"Ay, 'appen so," he answered, departing.
+
+When she got downstairs, she would find the house tidy,
+but dirty.  She could not rest until she had thoroughly cleaned;
+so she went down to the ash-pit with her dustpan.  Mrs. Kirk,
+spying her, would contrive to have to go to her own coal-place at
+that minute.  Then, across the wooden fence, she would call:
+
+"So you keep wagging on, then?"
+
+"Ay," answered Mrs. Morel deprecatingly.  "There's nothing
+else for it."
+
+"Have you seen Hose?" called a very small woman from across
+the road.  It was Mrs. Anthony, a black-haired, strange little body,
+who always wore a brown velvet dress, tight fitting.
+
+"I haven't," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Eh, I wish he'd come.  I've got a copperful of clothes, an'
+I'm sure I heered his bell."
+
+"Hark!  He's at the end."
+
+The two women looked down the alley.  At the end of the Bottoms
+a man stood in a sort of old-fashioned trap, bending over bundles
+of cream-coloured stuff; while a cluster of women held up their
+arms to him, some with bundles.  Mrs. Anthony herself had a heap
+of creamy, undyed stockings hanging over her arm.
+
+"I've done ten dozen this week," she said proudly to Mrs. Morel.
+
+"T-t-t!" went the other.  "I don't know how you can find time."
+
+"Eh!" said Mrs. Anthony.  "You can find time if you make time."
+
+"I don't know how you do it," said Mrs. Morel.  "And how much
+shall you get for those many?"
+
+"Tuppence-ha'penny a dozen," replied the other.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Morel.  "I'd starve before I'd sit down
+and seam twenty-four stockings for twopence ha'penny."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Anthony.  "You can rip along
+with 'em."
+
+Hose was coming along, ringing his bell.  Women were waiting at
+the yard-ends with their seamed stockings hanging over their arms. 
+The man, a common fellow, made jokes with them, tried to swindle them,
+and bullied them.  Mrs. Morel went up her yard disdainfully.
+
+It was an understood thing that if one woman wanted
+her neighbour, she should put the poker in the fire and bang at
+the back of the fireplace, which, as the fires were back to back,
+would make a great noise in the adjoining house.  One morning
+Mrs. Kirk, mixing a pudding, nearly started out of her skin as she
+heard the thud, thud, in her grate.  With her hands all floury,
+she rushed to the fence.
+
+"Did you knock, Mrs. Morel?"
+
+"If you wouldn't mind, Mrs. Kirk."
+
+Mrs. Kirk climbed on to her copper, got over the wall
+on to Mrs. Morel's copper, and ran in to her neighbour.
+
+"Eh, dear, how are you feeling?" she cried in concern.
+
+"You might fetch Mrs. Bower," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+Mrs. Kirk went into the yard, lifted up her strong, shrill voice,
+and called:
+
+"Ag-gie--Ag-gie!"
+
+The sound was heard from one end of the Bottoms to the other. 
+At last Aggie came running up, and was sent for Mrs. Bower,
+whilst Mrs. Kirk left her pudding and stayed with her neighbour.
+
+Mrs. Morel went to bed.  Mrs. Kirk had Annie and William
+for dinner.  Mrs. Bower, fat and waddling, bossed the house.
+
+"Hash some cold meat up for the master's dinner, and make him
+an apple-charlotte pudding," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"He may go without pudding this day," said Mrs. Bower.
+
+Morel was not as a rule one of the first to appear at the bottom
+of the pit, ready to come up.  Some men were there before four o'clock,
+when the whistle blew loose-all; but Morel, whose stall, a poor one,
+was at this time about a mile and a half away from the bottom,
+worked usually till the first mate stopped, then he finished also. 
+This day, however, the miner was sick of the work.  At two o'clock
+he looked at his watch, by the light of the green candle--he
+was in a safe working--and again at half-past two.  He was hewing
+at a piece of rock that was in the way for the next day's work. 
+As he sat on his heels, or kneeled, giving hard blows with his pick,
+"Uszza--uszza!" he went.
+
+"Shall ter finish, Sorry?" cried Barker, his fellow butty.
+
+"Finish?  Niver while the world stands!" growled Morel.
+
+And he went on striking.  He was tired.
+
+"It's a heart-breaking job," said Barker.
+
+But Morel was too exasperated, at the end of his tether,
+to answer.  Still he struck and hacked with all his might.
+
+"Tha might as well leave it, Walter," said Barker. 
+"It'll do to-morrow, without thee hackin' thy guts out."
+
+"I'll lay no b--- finger on this to-morrow, Isr'el!" cried Morel.
+
+"Oh, well, if tha wunna, somebody else'll ha'e to," said Israel.
+
+Then Morel continued to strike.
+
+"Hey-up there--LOOSE-A'!" cried the men, leaving the next stall.
+
+Morel continued to strike.
+
+"Tha'll happen catch me up," said Barker, departing.
+
+When he had gone, Morel, left alone, felt savage.  He had
+not finished his job.  He had overworked himself into a frenzy. 
+Rising, wet with sweat, he threw his tool down, pulled on his coat,
+blew out his candle, took his lamp, and went.  Down the main road
+the lights of the other men went swinging.  There was a hollow
+sound of many voices.  It was a long, heavy tramp underground.
+
+He sat at the bottom of the pit, where the great drops of water
+fell plash.  Many colliers were waiting their turns to go up,
+talking noisily.  Morel gave his answers short and disagreeable.
+
+"It's rainin', Sorry," said old Giles, who had had the news
+from the top.
+
+Morel found one comfort.  He had his old umbrella, which he loved,
+in the lamp cabin.  At last he took his stand on the chair,
+and was at the top in a moment.  Then he handed in his lamp and got
+his umbrella, which he had bought at an auction for one-and-six. He
+stood on the edge of the pit-bank for a moment, looking out over
+the fields; grey rain was falling.  The trucks stood full of wet,
+bright coal.  Water ran down the sides of the waggons, over the
+white "C.W. and Co.". Colliers, walking indifferent to the rain,
+were streaming down the line and up the field, a grey, dismal host. 
+Morel put up his umbrella, and took pleasure from the peppering of
+the drops thereon.
+
+All along the road to Bestwood the miners tramped, wet and
+grey and dirty, but their red mouths talking with animation. 
+Morel also walked with a gang, but he said nothing.  He frowned
+peevishly as he went.  Many men passed into the Prince of Wales or into
+Ellen's. Morel, feeling sufficiently disagreeable to resist temptation,
+trudged along under the dripping trees that overhung the park wall,
+and down the mud of Greenhill Lane.
+
+Mrs. Morel lay in bed, listening to the rain, and the feet
+of the colliers from Minton, their voices, and the bang, bang of
+the gates as they went through the stile up the field.
+
+"There's some herb beer behind the pantry door," she said. 
+"Th' master'll want a drink, if he doesn't stop."
+
+But he was late, so she concluded he had called for a drink,
+since it was raining.  What did he care about the child or her?
+
+She was very ill when her children were born.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, feeling sick to death.
+
+"A boy."
+
+And she took consolation in that.  The thought of being the
+mother of men was warming to her heart.  She looked at the child. 
+It had blue eyes, and a lot of fair hair, and was bonny. 
+Her love came up hot, in spite of everything.  She had it in bed
+with her.
+
+Morel, thinking nothing, dragged his way up the garden path,
+wearily and angrily.  He closed his umbrella, and stood it in the
+sink; then he sluthered his heavy boots into the kitchen. 
+Mrs. Bower appeared in the inner doorway.
+
+"Well," she said, "she's about as bad as she can be. 
+It's a boy childt."
+
+The miner grunted, put his empty snap-bag and his tin bottle
+on the dresser, went back into the scullery and hung up his coat,
+then came and dropped into his chair.
+
+"Han yer got a drink?" he asked.
+
+The woman went into the pantry.  There was heard the pop
+of a cork.  She set the mug, with a little, disgusted rap, on the
+table before Morel.  He drank, gasped, wiped his big moustache on
+the end of his scarf, drank, gasped, and lay back in his chair. 
+The woman would not speak to him again.  She set his dinner before him,
+and went upstairs.
+
+"Was that the master?" asked Mrs. Morel.
+
+"I've gave him his dinner," replied Mrs. Bower.
+
+After he had sat with his arms on the table--he resented
+the fact that Mrs. Bower put no cloth on for him, and gave him
+a little plate, instead of a full-sized dinner-plate--he began
+to eat.  The fact that his wife was ill, that he had another boy,
+was nothing to him at that moment.  He was too tired; he wanted
+his dinner; he wanted to sit with his arms lying on the board;
+he did not like having Mrs. Bower about.  The fire was too small
+to please him.
+
+After he had finished his meal, he sat for twenty minutes;
+then he stoked up a big fire.  Then, in his stockinged feet,
+he went reluctantly upstairs.  It was a struggle to face his wife
+at this moment, and he was tired.  His face was black, and smeared
+with sweat.  His singlet had dried again, soaking the dirt in. 
+He had a dirty woollen scarf round his throat.  So he stood at the foot
+of the bed.
+
+"Well, how are ter, then?" he asked.
+
+"I s'll be all right," she answered.
+
+"H'm!"
+
+He stood at a loss what to say next.  He was tired, and this
+bother was rather a nuisance to him, and he didn't quite know
+where he was.
+
+"A lad, tha says," he stammered.
+
+She turned down the sheet and showed the child.
+
+"Bless him!" he murmured.  Which made her laugh, because he
+blessed by rote--pretending paternal emotion, which he did not feel
+just then.
+
+"Go now," she said.
+
+"I will, my lass," he answered, turning away.
+
+Dismissed, he wanted to kiss her, but he dared not.  She half
+wanted him to kiss her, but could not bring herself to give any sign. 
+She only breathed freely when he was gone out of the room again,
+leaving behind him a faint smell of pit-dirt.
+
+Mrs. Morel had a visit every day from the Congregational clergyman. 
+Mr. Heaton was young, and very poor.  His wife had died at the
+birth of his first baby, so he remained alone in the manse. 
+He was a Bachelor of Arts of Cambridge, very shy, and no preacher. 
+Mrs. Morel was fond of him, and he depended on her.  For hours
+he talked to her, when she was well.  He became the god-parent
+of the child.
+
+Occasionally the minister stayed to tea with Mrs. Morel.  Then she
+laid the cloth early, got out her best cups, with a little green rim,
+and hoped Morel would not come too soon; indeed, if he stayed for a pint,
+she would not mind this day.  She had always two dinners to cook,
+because she believed children should have their chief meal at midday,
+whereas Morel needed his at five o'clock. So Mr. Heaton would hold
+the baby, whilst Mrs. Morel beat up a batter-pudding or peeled
+the potatoes, and he, watching her all the time, would discuss
+his next sermon.  His ideas were quaint and fantastic.  She brought
+him judiciously to earth.  It was a discussion of the wedding at Cana.
+
+"When He changed the water into wine at Cana," he said,
+"that is a symbol that the ordinary life, even the blood,
+of the married husband and wife, which had before been uninspired,
+like water, became filled with the Spirit, and was as wine, because,
+when love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes,
+is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered."
+
+Mrs. Morel thought to herself:
+
+"Yes, poor fellow, his young wife is dead; that is why he
+makes his love into the Holy Ghost."
+
+They were halfway down their first cup of tea when they heard
+the sluther of pit-boots.
+
+"Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Morel, in spite of herself.
+
+The minister looked rather scared.  Morel entered.  He was
+feeling rather savage.  He nodded a "How d'yer do" to the clergyman,
+who rose to shake hands with him.
+
+"Nay," said Morel, showing his hand, "look thee at it! 
+Tha niver wants ter shake hands wi' a hand like that, does ter? 
+There's too much pick-haft and shovel-dirt on it."
+
+The minister flushed with confusion, and sat down again. 
+Mrs. Morel rose, carried out the steaming saucepan.  Morel took off
+his coat, dragged his armchair to table, and sat down heavily.
+
+"Are you tired?" asked the clergyman.
+
+"Tired? I ham that," replied Morel.  "YOU don't know what it
+is to be tired, as I'M tired."
+
+"No," replied the clergyman.
+
+"Why, look yer 'ere," said the miner, showing the shoulders
+of his singlet.  "It's a bit dry now, but it's wet as a clout
+with sweat even yet.  Feel it."
+
+"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Morel.  "Mr. Heaton doesn't want to feel
+your nasty singlet."
+
+The clergyman put out his hand gingerly.
+
+"No, perhaps he doesn't," said Morel; "but it's
+all come out of me, whether or not.  An' iv'ry day
+alike my singlet's wringin' wet.  'Aven't you got
+a drink, Missis, for a man when he comes home barkled up from the pit?"
+
+"You know you drank all the beer," said Mrs. Morel, pouring out
+his tea.
+
+"An' was there no more to be got?"  Turning to the clergyman--"A
+man gets that caked up wi' th' dust, you know,--that clogged up
+down a coal-mine, he NEEDS a drink when he comes home."
+
+"I am sure he does," said the clergyman.
+
+"But it's ten to one if there's owt for him."
+
+"There's water--and there's tea," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Water!  It's not water as'll clear his throat."
+
+He poured out a saucerful of tea, blew it, and sucked it up
+through his great black moustache, sighing afterwards.  Then he
+poured out another saucerful, and stood his cup on the table.
+
+"My cloth!" said Mrs. Morel, putting it on a plate.
+
+"A man as comes home as I do 's too tired to care about cloths,"
+said Morel.
+
+"Pity!" exclaimed his wife, sarcastically.
+
+The room was full of the smell of meat and vegetables
+and pit-clothes.
+
+He leaned over to the minister, his great moustache thrust forward,
+his mouth very red in his black face.
+
+"Mr. Heaton," he said, "a man as has been down the black
+hole all day, dingin' away at a coal-face, yi, a sight harder
+than that wall---"
+
+"Needn't make a moan of it," put in Mrs. Morel.
+
+She hated her husband because, whenever he had an audience,
+he whined and played for sympathy.  William, sitting nursing
+the baby, hated him, with a boy's hatred for false sentiment,
+and for the stupid treatment of his mother.  Annie had never liked him;
+she merely avoided him.
+
+When the minister had gone, Mrs. Morel looked at her cloth.
+
+"A fine mess!" she said.
+
+"Dos't think I'm goin' to sit wi' my arms danglin', cos tha's
+got a parson for tea wi' thee?" he bawled.
+
+They were both angry, but she said nothing.  The baby began
+to cry, and Mrs. Morel, picking up a saucepan from the hearth,
+accidentally knocked Annie on the head, whereupon the girl began
+to whine, and Morel to shout at her.  In the midst of this pandemonium,
+William looked up at the big glazed text over the mantelpiece
+and read distinctly:
+
+"God Bless Our Home!"
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Morel, trying to soothe the baby, jumped up,
+rushed at him, boxed his ears, saying:
+
+"What are YOU putting in for?"
+
+And then she sat down and laughed, till tears ran over
+her cheeks, while William kicked the stool he had been sitting on,
+and Morel growled:
+
+"I canna see what there is so much to laugh at."
+
+One evening, directly after the parson's visit, feeling unable
+to bear herself after another display from her husband, she took
+Annie and the baby and went out.  Morel had kicked William,
+and the mother would never forgive him.
+
+She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the
+meadow to the cricket-ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe,
+evening light, whispering with the distant mill-race. She sat
+on a seat under the alders in the cricket-ground, and fronted
+the evening.  Before her, level and solid,
+spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of light. 
+Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion.  Many rooks,
+high up, came cawing home across the softly-woven sky.  They stooped
+in a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating, cawing,
+wheeling, like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump
+that made a dark boss among the pasture.
+
+A few gentlemen were practising, and Mrs. Morel could hear
+the chock of the ball, and the voices of men suddenly roused;
+could see the white forms of men shifting silently over the green,
+upon which already the under shadows were smouldering.  Away at
+the grange, one side of the haystacks was lit up, the other sides
+blue-grey. A waggon of sheaves rocked small across the melting
+yellow light.
+
+The sun was going down.  Every open evening, the hills of
+Derbyshire were blazed over with red sunset.  Mrs. Morel watched the sun
+sink from the glistening sky, leaving a soft flower-blue overhead,
+while the western space went red, as if all the fire had swum down there,
+leaving the bell cast flawless blue.  The mountain-ash berries across
+the field stood fierily out from the dark leaves, for a moment. 
+A few shocks of corn in a corner of the fallow stood up as if alive;
+she imagined them bowing; perhaps her son would be a Joseph. 
+In the east, a mirrored sunset floated pink opposite the west's scarlet. 
+The big haystacks on the hillside, that butted into the glare,
+went cold.
+
+With Mrs. Morel it was one of those still moments when the
+small frets vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she
+had the peace and the strength to see herself.  Now and again,
+a swallow cut close to her.  Now and again, Annie came up with a
+handful of alder-currants. The baby was restless on his mother's knee,
+clambering with his hands at the light.
+
+Mrs. Morel looked down at him.  She had dreaded this baby
+like a catastrophe, because of her feeling for her husband. 
+And now she felt strangely towards the infant.  Her heart was heavy
+because of the child, almost as if it were unhealthy, or malformed. 
+Yet it seemed quite well.  But she noticed the peculiar knitting
+of the baby's brows, and the peculiar heaviness of its eyes,
+as if it were trying to understand something that was pain.  She felt,
+when she looked at her child's dark, brooding pupils, as if a burden were
+on her heart.
+
+"He looks as if he was thinking about something--quite sorrowful,"
+said Mrs. Kirk.
+
+Suddenly, looking at him, the heavy feeling at the mother's heart
+melted into passionate grief.  She bowed over him, and a few tears
+shook swiftly out of her very heart.  The baby lifted his fingers.
+
+"My lamb!" she cried softly.
+
+And at that moment she felt, in some far inner place of her soul,
+that she and her husband were guilty.
+
+The baby was looking up at her.  It had blue eyes like her own,
+but its look was heavy, steady, as if it had realised something
+that had stunned some point of its soul.
+
+In her arms lay the delicate baby.  Its deep blue eyes,
+always looking up at her unblinking, seemed to draw her innermost
+thoughts out of her.  She no longer loved her husband; she had not
+wanted this child to come, and there it lay in her arms and pulled
+at her heart.  She felt as if the navel string that had connected
+its frail little body with hers had not been broken.  A wave of hot
+love went over her to the infant.  She held it close to her face
+and breast.  With all her force, with all her soul she would make up
+to it for having brought it into the world unloved.  She would love
+it all the more now it was here; carry it in her love.  Its clear,
+knowing eyes gave her pain and fear.  Did it know all about her? 
+When it lay under her heart, had it been listening then?  Was there
+a reproach in the look?  She felt the marrow melt in her bones,
+with fear and pain.
+
+Once more she was aware of the sun lying red on the rim
+of the hill opposite.  She suddenly held up the child in her hands.
+
+"Look!" she said.  "Look, my pretty!"
+
+She thrust the infant forward to the crimson, throbbing sun,
+almost with relief.  She saw him lift his little fist.  Then she put
+him to her bosom again, ashamed almost of her impulse to give him
+back again whence he came.
+
+"If he lives," she thought to herself, "what will become
+of him--what will he be?"
+
+Her heart was anxious.
+
+"I will call him Paul," she said suddenly; she knew not why.
+
+After a while she went home.  A fine shadow was flung over
+the deep green meadow, darkening all.
+
+As she expected, she found the house empty.  But Morel was
+home by ten o'clock, and that day, at least, ended peacefully.
+
+Walter Morel was, at this time, exceedingly irritable. 
+His work seemed to exhaust him.  When he came home he did not speak
+civilly to anybody.  If the fire were rather low he bullied about that;
+he grumbled about his dinner; if the children made a chatter he
+shouted at them in a way that made their mother's blood boil,
+and made them hate him.
+
+On the Friday, he was not home by eleven o'clock. The baby
+was unwell, and was restless, crying if he were put down.  Mrs. Morel,
+tired to death, and still weak, was scarcely under control.
+
+"I wish the nuisance would come," she said wearily to herself.
+
+The child at last sank down to sleep in her arms.  She was
+too tired to carry him to the cradle.
+
+"But I'll say nothing, whatever time he comes," she said. 
+"It only works me up; I won't say anything.  But I know if he does
+anything it'll make my blood boil," she added to herself.
+
+She sighed, hearing him coming, as if it were something she
+could not bear.  He, taking his revenge, was nearly drunk.  She kept
+her head bent over the child as he entered, not wishing to see him. 
+But it went through her like a flash of hot fire when, in passing,
+he lurched against the dresser, setting the tins rattling, and clutched
+at the white pot knobs for support.  He hung up his hat and coat,
+then returned, stood glowering from a distance at her, as she sat
+bowed over the child.
+
+"Is there nothing to eat in the house?" he asked, insolently,
+as if to a servant.  In certain stages of his intoxication he
+affected the clipped, mincing speech of the towns.  Mrs. Morel
+hated him most in this condition.
+
+"You know what there is in the house," she said, so coldly,
+it sounded impersonal.
+
+He stood and glared at her without moving a muscle.
+
+"I asked a civil question, and I expect a civil answer,"
+he said affectedly.
+
+"And you got it," she said, still ignoring him.
+
+He glowered again.  Then he came unsteadily forward. 
+He leaned on the table with one hand, and with the other jerked
+at the table drawer to get a knife to cut bread.  The drawer stuck because he
+pulled sideways.  In a temper he dragged it, so that it flew
+out bodily, and spoons, forks, knives, a hundred metallic things,
+splashed with a clatter and a clang upon the brick floor. 
+The baby gave a little convulsed start.
+
+"What are you doing, clumsy, drunken fool?" the mother cried.
+
+"Then tha should get the flamin' thing thysen.  Tha should get up,
+like other women have to, an' wait on a man."
+
+"Wait on you--wait on you?" she cried.  "Yes, I see myself."
+
+"Yis, an' I'll learn thee tha's got to.  Wait on ME, yes tha
+sh'lt wait on me---"
+
+"Never, milord.  I'd wait on a dog at the door first."
+
+"What--what?"
+
+He was trying to fit in the drawer.  At her last speech
+be turned round.  His face was crimson, his eyes bloodshot. 
+He stared at her one silent second in threat.
+
+"P-h!" she went quickly, in contempt.
+
+He jerked at the drawer in his excitement.  It fell, cut sharply
+on his shin, and on the reflex he flung it at her.
+
+One of the corners caught her brow as the shallow drawer
+crashed into the fireplace.  She swayed, almost fell stunned from
+her chair.  To her very soul she was sick; she clasped the child
+tightly to her bosom.  A few moments elapsed; then, with an effort,
+she brought herself to.  The baby was crying plaintively.  Her left
+brow was bleeding rather profusely.  As she glanced down at the child,
+her brain reeling, some drops of blood soaked into its white shawl;
+but the baby was at least not hurt.  She balanced her head to
+keep equilibrium, so that the blood ran into her eye.
+
+Walter Morel remained as he had stood, leaning on the table with
+one hand, looking blank.  When he was sufficiently sure of his balance,
+he went across to her, swayed, caught hold of the back of her
+rocking-chair, almost tipping her out; then leaning forward over her,
+and swaying as he spoke, he said, in a tone of wondering concern:
+
+"Did it catch thee?"
+
+He swayed again, as if he would pitch on to the child. 
+With the catastrophe he had lost all balance.
+
+"Go away," she said, struggling to keep her presence of mind.
+
+He hiccoughed.  "Let's--let's look at it," he said, hiccoughing again.
+
+"Go away!" she cried.
+
+"Lemme--lemme look at it, lass."
+
+She smelled him of drink, felt the unequal pull of his swaying
+grasp on the back of her rocking-chair.
+
+"Go away," she said, and weakly she pushed him off.
+
+He stood, uncertain in balance, gazing upon her.  Summoning all
+her strength she rose, the baby on one arm.  By a cruel effort of will,
+moving as if in sleep, she went across to the scullery, where she
+bathed her eye for a minute in cold water; but she was too dizzy. 
+Afraid lest she should swoon, she returned to her rocking-chair,
+trembling in every fibre.  By instinct, she kept the baby clasped.
+
+Morel, bothered, had succeeded in pushing the drawer back
+into its cavity, and was on his knees, groping, with numb paws,
+for the scattered spoons.
+
+Her brow was still bleeding.  Presently Morel got up and came
+craning his neck towards her.
+
+"What has it done to thee, lass?" he asked, in a very wretched,
+humble tone.
+
+"You can see what it's done," she answered.
+
+He stood, bending forward, supported on his hands, which grasped
+his legs just above the knee.  He peered to look at the wound. 
+She drew away from the thrust of his face with its great moustache,
+averting her own face as much as possible.  As he looked at her,
+who was cold and impassive as stone, with mouth shut tight,
+he sickened with feebleness and hopelessness of spirit. 
+He was turning drearily away, when he saw a drop of blood fall
+from the averted wound into the baby's fragile, glistening hair. 
+Fascinated, he watched the heavy dark drop hang in the glistening cloud,
+and pull down the gossamer.  Another drop fell.  It would soak
+through to the baby's scalp.  He watched, fascinated, feeling it
+soak in; then, finally, his manhood broke.
+
+"What of this child?" was all his wife said to him. 
+But her low, intense tones brought his head lower.  She softened: 
+"Get me some wadding out of the middle drawer," she said.
+
+He stumbled away very obediently, presently returning with a
+pad, which she singed before the fire, then put on her forehead,
+as she sat with the baby on her lap.
+
+"Now that clean pit-scarf."
+
+Again he rummaged and fumbled in the drawer, returning presently
+with a red, narrow scarf.  She took it, and with trembling fingers
+proceeded to bind it round her head.
+
+"Let me tie it for thee," he said humbly.
+
+"I can do it myself," she replied.  When it was done she
+went upstairs, telling him to rake the fire and lock the door.
+
+In the morning Mrs. Morel said:
+
+"I knocked against the latch of the coal-place, when I
+was getting a raker in the dark, because the candle blew out." 
+Her two small children looked up at her with wide, dismayed eyes. 
+They said nothing, but their parted lips seemed to express the
+unconscious tragedy they felt.
+
+Walter Morel lay in bed next day until nearly dinner-time. He
+did not think of the previous evening's work.  He scarcely thought
+of anything, but he would not think of that.  He lay and suffered like
+a sulking dog.  He had hurt himself most; and he was the more damaged
+because he would never say a word to her, or express his sorrow. 
+He tried to wriggle out of it.  "It was her own fault," he said
+to himself.  Nothing, however, could prevent his inner consciousness
+inflicting on him the punishment which ate into his spirit like rust,
+and which he could only alleviate by drinking.
+
+He felt as if he had not the initiative to get up, or to say a word,
+or to move, but could only lie like a log.  Moreover, he had himself
+violent pains in the head.  It was Saturday.  Towards noon he rose,
+cut himself food in the pantry, ate it with his head dropped,
+then pulled on his boots, and went out, to return at three o'clock
+slightly tipsy and relieved; then once more straight to bed. 
+He rose again at six in the evening, had tea and went straight out.
+
+Sunday was the same:  bed till noon, the Palmerston Arms till
+2.30, dinner, and bed; scarcely a word spoken.  When Mrs. Morel
+went upstairs, towards four o'clock, to put on her Sunday dress,
+he was fast asleep.  She would have felt sorry for him, if he
+had once said, "Wife, I'm sorry."  But no; he insisted to himself
+it was her fault.  And so he broke himself.  So she merely left
+him alone.  There was this deadlock of passion between them,
+and she was stronger.
+
+The family began tea.  Sunday was the only day when all sat
+down to meals together.
+
+"Isn't my father going to get up?" asked William.
+
+"Let him lie," the mother replied.
+
+There was a feeling of misery over all the house.  The children
+breathed the air that was poisoned, and they felt dreary.  They were
+rather disconsolate, did not know what to do, what to play at.
+
+Immediately Morel woke he got straight out of bed.  That was
+characteristic of him all his life.  He was all for activity. 
+The prostrated inactivity of two mornings was stifling him.
+
+It was near six o'clock when he got down.  This time he entered
+without hesitation, his wincing sensitiveness having hardened again. 
+He did not care any longer what the family thought or felt.
+
+The tea-things were on the table.  William was reading aloud
+from "The Child's Own", Annie listening and asking eternally "why?" 
+Both children hushed into silence as they heard the approaching
+thud of their father's stockinged feet, and shrank as he entered. 
+Yet he was usually indulgent to them.
+
+Morel made the meal alone, brutally.  He ate and drank
+more noisily than he had need.  No one spoke to him.  The family
+life withdrew, shrank away, and became hushed as he entered. 
+But he cared no longer about his alienation.
+
+Immediately he had finished tea he rose with alacrity to go out. 
+It was this alacrity, this haste to be gone, which so sickened
+Mrs. Morel.  As she heard him sousing heartily in cold water,
+heard the eager scratch of the steel comb on the side of the bowl,
+as he wetted his hair, she closed her eyes in disgust.  As he bent over,
+lacing his boots, there was a certain vulgar gusto in his movement
+that divided him from the reserved, watchful rest of the family. 
+He always ran away from the battle with himself.  Even in his own
+heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said
+so-and-so, it would never have happened.  She asked for what she's got." 
+The children waited in restraint during his preparations.  When he
+had gone, they sighed with relief.
+
+He closed the door behind him, and was glad.  It was a
+rainy evening.  The Palmerston would be the cosier.  He hastened
+forward in anticipation.  All the slate roofs of the Bottoms shone
+black with wet.  The roads, always dark with coal-dust, were full
+of blackish mud.  He hastened along.  The Palmerston windows were steamed
+over.  The passage was paddled with wet feet.  But the air was warm,
+if foul, and full of the sound of voices and the smell of beer
+and smoke.
+
+"What shollt ha'e, Walter?" cried a voice, as soon as Morel
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Oh, Jim, my lad, wheriver has thee sprung frae?"
+
+The men made a seat for him, and took him in warmly.  He was glad. 
+In a minute or two they had thawed all responsibility out of him,
+all shame, all trouble, and he was clear as a bell for a jolly night.
+
+On the Wednesday following, Morel was penniless.  He dreaded
+his wife.  Having hurt her, he hated her.  He did not know what to
+do with himself that evening, having not even twopence with which
+to go to the Palmerston, and being already rather deeply in debt. 
+So, while his wife was down the garden with the child, he hunted
+in the top drawer of the dresser where she kept her purse, found it,
+and looked inside.  It contained a half-crown, two halfpennies,
+and a sixpence.  So he took the sixpence, put the purse carefully back,
+and went out.
+
+The next day, when she wanted to pay the greengrocer, she looked
+in the purse for her sixpence, and her heart sank to her shoes. 
+Then she sat down and thought:  "WAS there a sixpence?  I hadn't
+spent it, had I?  And I hadn't left it anywhere else?"
+
+She was much put about.  She hunted round everywhere for it. 
+And, as she sought, the conviction came into her heart that her
+husband had taken it.  What she had in her purse was all the money
+she possessed.  But that he should sneak it from her thus was unbearable. 
+He had done so twice before.  The first time she had not accused him,
+and at the week-end he had put the shilling again into her purse. 
+So that was how she had known he had taken it.  The second time he
+had not paid back.
+
+This time she felt it was too much.  When he had had his dinner--
+he came home early that day--she said to him coldly:
+
+"Did you take sixpence out of my purse last night?"
+
+"Me!" he said, looking up in an offended way.  "No, I didna! 
+I niver clapped eyes on your purse."
+
+But she could detect the lie.
+
+"Why, you know you did," she said quietly.
+
+"I tell you I didna," he shouted.  "Yer at me again, are yer? 
+I've had about enough on't."
+
+"So you filch sixpence out of my purse while I'm taking
+the clothes in."
+
+"I'll may yer pay for this," he said, pushing back his
+chair in desperation.  He bustled and got washed, then went
+determinedly upstairs.  Presently he came down dressed,
+and with a big bundle in a blue-checked, enormous handkerchief.
+
+"And now," he said, "you'll see me again when you do."
+
+"It'll be before I want to," she replied; and at that he marched
+out of the house with his bundle.  She sat trembling slightly,
+but her heart brimming with contempt.  What would she do if he went
+to some other pit, obtained work, and got in with another woman? 
+But she knew him too well--he couldn't. She was dead sure of him. 
+Nevertheless her heart was gnawed inside her.
+
+"Where's my dad?" said William, coming in from school.
+
+"He says he's run away," replied the mother.
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Eh, I don't know.  He's taken a bundle in the blue handkerchief,
+and says he's not coming back."
+
+"What shall we do?" cried the boy.
+
+"Eh, never trouble, he won't go far."
+
+"But if he doesn't come back," wailed Annie.
+
+And she and William retired to the sofa and wept.  Mrs. Morel
+sat and laughed.
+
+"You pair of gabeys!" she exclaimed.  "You'll see him before
+the night's out."
+
+But the children were not to be consoled.  Twilight came on. 
+Mrs. Morel grew anxious from very weariness.  One part of her said
+it would be a relief to see the last of him; another part fretted
+because of keeping the children; and inside her, as yet, she could
+not quite let him go.  At the bottom, she knew very well he could
+NOT go.
+
+When she went down to the coal-place at the end of the garden,
+however, she felt something behind the door.  So she looked. 
+And there in the dark lay the big blue bundle.  She sat on a piece
+of coal and laughed.  Every time she saw it, so fat and yet
+so ignominious, slunk into its corner in the dark, with its ends
+flopping like dejected ears from the knots, she laughed again. 
+She was relieved.
+
+Mrs. Morel sat waiting.  He had not any money, she knew,
+so if he stopped he was running up a bill.  She was very tired of him--
+tired to death.  He had not even the courage to carry his bundle
+beyond the yard-end.
+
+As she meditated, at about nine o'clock, he opened the door
+and came in, slinking, and yet sulky.  She said not a word. 
+He took off his coat, and slunk to his armchair, where he began
+to take off his boots.
+
+"You'd better fetch your bundle before you take your boots off,"
+she said quietly.
+
+"You may thank your stars I've come back to-night," he said,
+looking up from under his dropped head, sulkily, trying to be impressive.
+
+"Why, where should you have gone?  You daren't even get your
+parcel through the yard-end," she said.
+
+He looked such a fool she was not even angry with him. 
+He continued to take his boots off and prepare for bed.
+
+"I don't know what's in your blue handkerchief," she said. 
+"But if you leave it the children shall fetch it in the morning."
+
+Whereupon he got up and went out of the house, returning presently
+and crossing the kitchen with averted face, hurrying upstairs. 
+As Mrs. Morel saw him slink quickly through the inner doorway,
+holding his bundle, she laughed to herself:  but her heart was bitter,
+because she had loved him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL--THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM
+
+DURING the next week Morel's temper was almost unbearable. 
+Like all miners, he was a great lover of medicines, which,
+strangely enough, he would often pay for himself.
+
+"You mun get me a drop o' laxy vitral," he said.  "It's a
+winder as we canna ha'e a sup i' th' 'ouse."
+
+So Mrs. Morel bought him elixir of vitriol, his favourite
+first medicine.  And he made himself a jug of wormwood tea.  He had
+hanging in the attic great bunches of dried herbs:
+wormwood, rue, horehound, elder flowers, parsley-purt,
+marshmallow, hyssop, dandelion, and centaury.  Usually there was a jug of
+one or other decoction standing on the hob, from which he drank largely.
+
+"Grand!" he said, smacking his lips after wormwood.  "Grand!" 
+And he exhorted the children to try.
+
+"It's better than any of your tea or your cocoa stews," he vowed. 
+But they were not to be tempted.
+
+This time, however, neither pills nor vitriol nor all his herbs
+would shift the "nasty peens in his head". He was sickening for an
+attack of an inflammation of the brain.  He had never been well since
+his sleeping on the ground when he went with Jerry to Nottingham. 
+Since then he had drunk and stormed.  Now he fell seriously ill,
+and Mrs. Morel had him to nurse.  He was one of the worst
+patients imaginable.  But, in spite of all, and putting aside the
+fact that he was breadwinner, she never quite wanted him to die. 
+Still there was one part of her wanted him for herself.
+
+The neighbours were very good to her:  occasionally some
+had the children in to meals, occasionally some would do the
+downstairs work for her, one would mind the baby for a day. 
+But it was a great drag, nevertheless.  It was not every day
+the neighbours helped.  Then she had nursing of baby and husband,
+cleaning and cooking, everything to do.  She was quite worn out,
+but she did what was wanted of her.
+
+And the money was just sufficient.  She had seventeen
+shillings a week from clubs, and every Friday Barker and the other
+butty put by a portion of the stall's profits for Morel's wife. 
+And the neighbours made broths, and gave eggs, and such invalids'
+trifles.  If they had not helped her so generously in those times,
+Mrs. Morel would never have pulled through, without incurring
+debts that would have dragged her down.
+
+The weeks passed.  Morel, almost against hope, grew better. 
+He had a fine constitution, so that, once on the mend, he went straight
+forward to recovery.  Soon he was pottering about downstairs. 
+During his illness his wife had spoilt him a little.  Now he wanted
+her to continue.  He often put his band to his head, pulled down
+the comers of his mouth, and shammed pains he did not feel. 
+But there was no deceiving her.  At first she merely smiled to herself. 
+Then she scolded him sharply.
+
+"Goodness, man, don't be so lachrymose."
+
+That wounded him slightly, but still he continued to feign sickness.
+
+"I wouldn't be such a mardy baby," said the wife shortly.
+
+Then he was indignant, and cursed under his breath, like a boy. 
+He was forced to resume a normal tone, and to cease to whine.
+
+Nevertheless, there was a state of peace in the house for some time. 
+Mrs. Morel was more tolerant of him, and he, depending on her almost
+like a child, was rather happy.  Neither knew that she was more tolerant
+because she loved him less.  Up till this time, in spite of all,
+he had been her husband and her man.  She had felt that, more or less,
+what he did to himself he did to her.  Her living depended on him. 
+There were many, many stages in the ebbing of her love for him,
+but it was always ebbing.
+
+Now, with the birth of this third baby, her self no longer set
+towards him, helplessly, but was like a tide that scarcely rose,
+standing off from him.  After this she scarcely desired him. 
+And, standing more aloof from him, not feeling him so much part
+of herself, but merely part of her circumstances, she did not mind
+so much what he did, could leave him alone.
+
+There was the halt, the wistfulness about the ensuing year,
+which is like autumn in a man's life.  His wife was casting him off,
+half regretfully, but relentlessly; casting him off and turning
+now for love and life to the children.  Henceforward he was more
+or less a husk.  And he himself acquiesced, as so many men do,
+yielding their place to their children.
+
+During his recuperation, when it was really over between them,
+both made an effort to come back somewhat to the old relationship
+of the first months of their marriage.  He sat at home and,
+when the children were in bed, and she was sewing--she did all her
+sewing by hand, made all shirts and children's clothing--he would
+read to her from the newspaper, slowly pronouncing and delivering
+the words like a man pitching quoits.  Often she hurried him on,
+giving him a phrase in anticipation.  And then he took her words humbly.
+
+The silences between them were peculiar.  There would be
+the swift, slight "cluck" of her needle, the sharp "pop" of his
+lips as he let out the smoke, the warmth, the sizzle on the bars
+as he spat in the fire.  Then her thoughts turned to William. 
+Already he was getting a big boy.  Already he was top of the class,
+and the master said he was the smartest lad in the school. 
+She saw him a man, young, full of vigour, making the world glow
+again for her.
+
+And Morel sitting there, quite alone, and having nothing
+to think about, would be feeling vaguely uncomfortable.  His soul
+would reach out in its blind way to her and find her gone. 
+He felt a sort of emptiness, almost like a vacuum in his soul. 
+He was unsettled and restless.  Soon he could not live in
+that atmosphere, and he affected his wife.  Both felt an oppression
+on their breathing when they were left together for some time. 
+Then he went to bed and she settled down to enjoy herself alone,
+working, thinking, living.
+
+Meanwhile another infant was coming, fruit of this little peace
+and tenderness between the separating parents.  Paul was seventeen
+months old when the new baby was born.  He was then a plump,
+pale child, quiet, with heavy blue eyes, and still the peculiar
+slight knitting of the brows.  The last child was also a boy,
+fair and bonny.  Mrs. Morel was sorry when she knew she was with child,
+both for economic reasons and because she did not love her husband;
+but not for the sake of the infant.
+
+They called the baby Arthur.  He was very pretty, with a
+mop of gold curls, and he loved his father from the first. 
+Mrs. Morel was glad this child loved the father.  Hearing the
+miner's footsteps, the baby would put up his arms and crow. 
+And if Morel were in a good temper, he called back immediately,
+in his hearty, mellow voice:
+
+"What then, my beauty?  I sh'll come to thee in a minute."
+
+And as soon as he had taken off his pit-coat, Mrs. Morel would
+put an apron round the child, and give him to his father.
+
+"What a sight the lad looks!" she would exclaim sometimes,
+taking back the baby, that was smutted on the face from his father's
+kisses and play.  Then Morel laughed joyfully.
+
+"He's a little collier, bless his bit o' mutton!" he exclaimed.
+
+And these were the happy moments of her life now, when the
+children included the father in her heart.
+
+Meanwhile William grew bigger and stronger and more active,
+while Paul, always rather delicate and quiet, got slimmer,
+and trotted after his mother like her shadow.  He was usually active
+and interested, but sometimes he would have fits of depression. 
+Then the mother would find the boy of three or four crying on
+the sofa.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, and got no answer.
+
+"What's the matter?" she insisted, getting cross.
+
+"I don't know," sobbed the child.
+
+So she tried to reason him out of it, or to amuse him,
+but without effect.  It made her feel beside herself.  Then the father,
+always impatient, would jump from his chair and shout:
+
+"If he doesn't stop, I'll smack him till he does."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort," said the mother coldly. 
+And then she carried the child into the yard, plumped him into his
+little chair, and said:  "Now cry there, Misery!"
+
+And then a butterfly on the rhubarb-leaves perhaps caught his eye,
+or at last he cried himself to sleep.  These fits were not often,
+but they caused a shadow in Mrs. Morel's heart, and her treatment
+of Paul was different from that of the other children.
+
+Suddenly one morning as she was looking down the alley
+of the Bottoms for the barm-man, she heard a voice calling her. 
+It was the thin little Mrs. Anthony in brown velvet.
+
+"Here, Mrs. Morel, I want to tell you about your Willie."
+
+"Oh, do you?" replied Mrs. Morel.  "Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"A lad as gets 'old of another an' rips his clothes off'n
+'is back," Mrs. Anthony said, "wants showing something."
+
+"Your Alfred's as old as my William," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"'Appen 'e is, but that doesn't give him a right to get hold
+of the boy's collar, an' fair rip it clean off his back."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Morel, "I don't thrash my children,
+and even if I did, I should want to hear their side of the tale."
+
+"They'd happen be a bit better if they did get a good hiding,"
+retorted Mrs. Anthony.  "When it comes ter rippin' a lad's clean
+collar off'n 'is back a-purpose---"
+
+"I'm sure he didn't do it on purpose," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Make me a liar!" shouted Mrs. Anthony.
+
+Mrs. Morel moved away and closed her gate.  Her hand trembled
+as she held her mug of barm.
+
+"But I s'll let your mester know," Mrs. Anthony cried after her.
+
+At dinner-time, when William had finished his meal and wanted
+to be off again--he was then eleven years old--his mother said to him:
+
+"What did you tear Alfred Anthony's collar for?"
+
+"When did I tear his collar?"
+
+"I don't know when, but his mother says you did."
+
+"Why--it was yesterday--an' it was torn a'ready."
+
+"But you tore it more."
+
+"Well, I'd got a cobbler as 'ad licked seventeen--an'
+Alfy Ant'ny 'e says:
+
+      'Adam an' Eve an' pinch-me,
+      Went down to a river to bade.
+      Adam an' Eve got drownded,
+      Who do yer think got saved?'
+
+An' so I says:  'Oh, Pinch-YOU,' an' so I pinched 'im, an'
+'e was mad, an' so he snatched my cobbler an' run off with it. 
+An' so I run after 'im, an' when I was gettin' hold of 'im,
+'e dodged, an' it ripped 'is collar.  But I got my cobbler---"
+
+He pulled from his pocket a black old horse-chestnut hanging on
+a string.  This old cobbler had "cobbled"--hit and smashed--seventeen
+other cobblers on similar strings.  So the boy was proud of his veteran.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Morel, "you know you've got no right to rip
+his collar."
+
+"Well, our mother!" he answered.  "I never meant tr'a done it--an'
+it was on'y an old indirrubber collar as was torn a'ready."
+
+"Next time," said his mother, "YOU be more careful. 
+I shouldn't like it if you came home with your collar torn off."
+
+"I don't care, our mother; I never did it a-purpose."
+
+The boy was rather miserable at being reprimanded.
+
+"No--well, you be more careful."
+
+William fled away, glad to be exonerated.  And Mrs. Morel,
+who hated any bother with the neighbours, thought she would explain
+to Mrs. Anthony, and the business would be over.
+
+But that evening Morel came in from the pit looking very sour. 
+He stood in the kitchen and glared round, but did not speak for
+some minutes.  Then:
+
+"Wheer's that Willy?" he asked.
+
+"What do you want HIM for?" asked Mrs. Morel, who had guessed.
+
+"I'll let 'im know when I get him," said Morel, banging his
+pit-bottle on to the dresser.
+
+"I suppose Mrs. Anthony's got hold of you and been yarning
+to you about Alfy's collar," said Mrs. Morel, rather sneering.
+
+"Niver mind who's got hold of me," said Morel.  "When I get
+hold of 'IM I'll make his bones rattle."
+
+"It's a poor tale," said Mrs. Morel, "that you're so ready
+to side with any snipey vixen who likes to come telling tales
+against your own children."
+
+"I'll learn 'im!" said Morel.  "It none matters to me whose
+lad 'e is; 'e's none goin' rippin' an' tearin' about just as he's
+a mind."
+
+"'Ripping and tearing about!'" repeated Mrs. Morel. 
+"He was running after that Alfy, who'd taken his cobbler, and he
+accidentally got hold of his collar, because the other dodged--as
+an Anthony would."
+
+"I know!" shouted Morel threateningly.
+
+"You would, before you're told," replied his wife bitingly.
+
+"Niver you mind," stormed Morel.  "I know my business."
+
+"That's more than doubtful," said Mrs. Morel, "supposing some
+loud-mouthed creature had been getting you to thrash your own children."
+
+"I know," repeated Morel.
+
+And he said no more, but sat and nursed his bad temper. 
+Suddenly William ran in, saying:
+
+"Can I have my tea, mother?"
+
+"Tha can ha'e more than that!" shouted Morel.
+
+"Hold your noise, man," said Mrs. Morel; "and don't look
+so ridiculous."
+
+"He'll look ridiculous before I've done wi' him!" shouted Morel,
+rising from his chair and glaring at his son.
+
+William, who was a tall lad for his years, but very sensitive,
+had gone pale, and was looking in a sort of horror at his father.
+
+"Go out!"  Mrs. Morel commanded her son.
+
+William had not the wit to move.  Suddenly Morel clenched
+his fist, and crouched.
+
+"I'll GI'E him 'go out'!" he shouted like an insane thing.
+
+"What!" cried Mrs. Morel, panting with rage.  "You shall
+not touch him for HER telling, you shall not!"
+
+"Shonna I?" shouted Morel.  "Shonna I?"
+
+And, glaring at the boy, he ran forward.  Mrs. Morel sprang
+in between them, with her fist lifted.
+
+"Don't you DARE!" she cried.
+
+"What!" he shouted, baffled for the moment.  "What!"
+
+She spun round to her son.
+
+"GO out of the house!" she commanded him in fury.
+
+The boy, as if hypnotised by her, turned suddenly and was gone. 
+Morel rushed to the door, but was too late.  He returned, pale under
+his pit-dirt with fury.  But now his wife was fully roused.
+
+"Only dare!" she said in a loud, ringing voice.  "Only dare,
+milord, to lay a finger on that child!  You'll regret it for ever."
+
+He was afraid of her.  In a towering rage, he sat down.
+
+When the children were old enough to be left, Mrs. Morel
+joined the Women's Guild.  It was a little club of women attached
+to the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which met on Monday night
+in the long room over the grocery shop of the Bestwood "Co-op". The
+women were supposed to discuss the benefits to be derived from
+co-operation, and other social questions.  Sometimes Mrs. Morel
+read a paper.  It seemed queer to the children to see their mother,
+who was always busy about the house, sitting writing in her
+rapid fashion, thinking, referring to books, and writing again. 
+They felt for her on such occasions the deepest respect.
+
+But they loved the Guild.  It was the only thing to which they
+did not grudge their mother--and that partly because she enjoyed it,
+partly because of the treats they derived from it.  The Guild
+was called by some hostile husbands, who found their wives getting
+too independent, the "clat-fart" shop--that is, the gossip-shop. It
+is true, from off the basis of the Guild, the women could look at
+their homes, at the conditions of their own lives, and find fault. 
+So the colliers found their women had a new standard of their own,
+rather disconcerting.  And also, Mrs. Morel always had a lot of news
+on Monday nights, so that the children liked William to be in when
+their mother came home, because she told him things.
+
+Then, when the lad was thirteen, she got him a job in
+the "Co-op."  office.  He was a very clever boy, frank, with rather
+rough features and real viking blue eyes.
+
+"What dost want ter ma'e a stool-harsed Jack on 'im for?"
+said Morel.  "All he'll do is to wear his britches behind out an'
+earn nowt.  What's 'e startin' wi'?"
+
+"It doesn't matter what he's starting with," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"It wouldna!  Put 'im i' th' pit we me, an' 'ell earn a easy
+ten shillin' a wik from th' start.  But six shillin' wearin' his truck-end
+out on a stool's better than ten shillin' i' th' pit wi'me, I know."
+
+"He is NOT going in the pit," said Mrs. Morel, "and there's
+an end of it."
+
+"It wor good enough for me, but it's non good enough for 'im."
+
+"If your mother put you in the pit at twelve, it's no reason
+why I should do the same with my lad."
+
+"Twelve!  It wor a sight afore that!"
+
+"Whenever it was," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+She was very proud of her son.  He went to the night school,
+and learned shorthand, so that by the time he was sixteen he was
+the best shorthand clerk and book-keeper on the place, except one. 
+Then he taught in the night schools.  But he was so fiery that only
+his good-nature and his size protected him.
+
+All the things that men do--the decent things--William did. 
+He could run like the wind.  When he was twelve he won a first
+prize in a race; an inkstand of glass, shaped like an anvil. 
+It stood proudly on the dresser, and gave Mrs. Morel a keen pleasure. 
+The boy only ran for her.  He flew home with his anvil, breathless,
+with a "Look, mother!"  That was the first real tribute to herself. 
+She took it like a queen.
+
+"How pretty!" she exclaimed.
+
+Then he began to get ambitious.  He gave all his money to
+his mother.  When he earned fourteen shillings a week, she gave him
+back two for himself, and, as he never drank, he felt himself rich. 
+He went about with the bourgeois of Bestwood.  The townlet contained
+nothing higher than the clergyman.  Then came the bank manager,
+then the doctors, then the tradespeople, and after that the hosts
+of colliers.  Willam began to consort with the sons of the chemist,
+the schoolmaster, and the tradesmen.  He played billiards in
+the Mechanics' Hall.  Also he danced--this in spite of his mother. 
+All the life that Bestwood offered he enjoyed, from the sixpenny-hops
+down Church Street, to sports and billiards.
+
+Paul was treated to dazzling descriptions of all kinds of
+flower-like ladies, most of whom lived like cut blooms in William's
+heart for a brief fortnight.
+
+Occasionally some flame would come in pursuit of her errant
+swain.  Mrs. Morel would find a strange girl at the door,
+and immediately she sniffed the air.
+
+"Is Mr. Morel in?" the damsel would ask appealingly.
+
+"My husband is at home," Mrs. Morel replied.
+
+"I--I mean YOUNG Mr. Morel," repeated the maiden painfully.
+
+"Which one?  There are several."
+
+Whereupon much blushing and stammering from the fair one.
+
+"I--I met Mr. Morel--at Ripley," she explained.
+
+"Oh--at a dance!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I don't approve of the girls my son meets at dances. 
+And he is NOT at home."
+
+Then he came home angry with his mother for having turned the
+girl away so rudely.  He was a careless, yet eager-looking fellow,
+who walked with long strides, sometimes frowning, often with his cap
+pushed jollily to the back of his head.  Now he came in frowning. 
+He threw his cap on to the sofa, and took his strong jaw in his hand,
+and glared down at his mother.  She was small, with her hair
+taken straight back from her forehead.  She had a quiet air
+of authority, and yet of rare warmth.  Knowing her son was angry,
+she trembled inwardly.
+
+"Did a lady call for me yesterday, mother?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know about a lady.  There was a girl came."
+
+"And why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Because I forgot, simply."
+
+He fumed a little.
+
+"A good-looking girl--seemed a lady?"
+
+"I didn't look at her."
+
+"Big brown eyes?"
+
+"I did NOT look.  And tell your girls, my son, that when they're
+running after you, they're not to come and ask your mother for you. 
+Tell them that--brazen baggages you meet at dancing-classes."
+
+"I'm sure she was a nice girl."
+
+"And I'm sure she wasn't."
+
+There ended the altercation.  Over the dancing there was a great
+strife between the mother and the son.  The grievance reached its
+height when William said he was going to Hucknall Torkard--considered
+a low town--to a fancy-dress ball.  He was to be a Highlander.
+There was a dress he could hire, which one of his friends
+had had, and which fitted him perfectly.  The Highland suit came home. 
+Mrs. Morel received it coldly and would not unpack it.
+
+"My suit come?" cried William.
+
+"There's a parcel in the front room."
+
+He rushed in and cut the string.
+
+"How do you fancy your son in this!" he said, enraptured,
+showing her the suit.
+
+"You know I don't want to fancy you in it."
+
+On the evening of the dance, when he had come home to dress,
+Mrs. Morel put on her coat and bonnet.
+
+"Aren't you going to stop and see me, mother?" he asked.
+
+"No; I don't want to see you," she replied.
+
+She was rather pale, and her face was closed and hard. 
+She was afraid of her son's going the same way as his father. 
+He hesitated a moment, and his heart stood still with anxiety. 
+Then he caught sight of the Highland bonnet with its ribbons. 
+He picked it up gleefully, forgetting her.  She went out.
+
+When he was nineteen he suddenly left the Co-op. office and got
+a situation in Nottingham.  In his new place he had thirty shillings
+a week instead of eighteen.  This was indeed a rise.  His mother and
+his father were brimmed up with pride.  Everybody praised William. 
+It seemed he was going to get on rapidly.  Mrs. Morel hoped,
+with his aid, to help her younger sons.  Annie was now studying
+to be a teacher.  Paul, also very clever, was getting on well,
+having lessons in French and German from his godfather, the clergyman
+who was still a friend to Mrs. Morel.  Arthur, a spoilt and very
+good-looking boy, was at the Board school, but there was talk
+of his trying to get a scholarship for the High School in Nottingham.
+
+William remained a year at his new post in Nottingham. 
+He was studying hard, and growing serious.  Something seemed to be
+fretting him.  Still he went out to the dances and the river parties. 
+He did not drink.  The children were all rabid teetotallers. 
+He came home very late at night, and sat yet longer studying. 
+His mother implored him to take more care, to do one thing
+or another.
+
+"Dance, if you want to dance, my son; but don't think you can
+work in the office, and then amuse yourself, and THEN
+study on top of all.  You can't; the human frame won't
+stand it.  Do one thing or the other--amuse yourself or learn Latin;
+but don't try to do both."
+
+Then he got a place in London, at a hundred and twenty a year. 
+This seemed a fabulous sum.  His mother doubted almost whether to
+rejoice or to grieve.
+
+"They want me in Lime Street on Monday week, mother," he cried,
+his eyes blazing as he read the letter.  Mrs. Morel felt everything
+go silent inside her.  He read the letter:  "'And will you reply
+by Thursday whether you accept.  Yours faithfully---'  They want me,
+mother, at a hundred and twenty a year, and don't even ask to see me. 
+Didn't I tell you I could do it!  Think of me in London!  And I
+can give you twenty pounds a year, mater.  We s'll all be rolling
+in money."
+
+"We shall, my son," she answered sadly.
+
+It never occurred to him that she might be more hurt at his going
+away than glad of his success.  Indeed, as the days drew near for
+his departure, her heart began to close and grow dreary with despair. 
+She loved him so much!  More than that, she hoped in him so much. 
+Almost she lived by him.  She liked to do things for him:  she liked
+to put a cup for his tea and to iron his collars, of which he was
+so proud.  It was a joy to her to have him proud of his collars. 
+There was no laundry.  So she used to rub away at them with her little
+convex iron, to polish them, till they shone from the sheer pressure
+of her arm.  Now she would not do it for him.  Now he was going away. 
+She felt almost as if he were going as well out of her heart. 
+He did not seem to leave her inhabited with himself.  That was the grief
+and the pain to her.  He took nearly all himself away.
+
+A few days before his departure--he was just twenty--he burned his
+love-letters. They had hung on a file at the top of the kitchen cupboard. 
+From some of them he had read extracts to his mother.  Some of them
+she had taken the trouble to read herself.  But most were too trivial.
+
+Now, on the Saturday morning he said:
+
+"Come on, Postle, let's go through my letters, and you can
+have the birds and flowers."
+
+Mrs. Morel had done her Saturday's work on the Friday,
+because he was having a last day's holiday.  She was making him
+a rice cake, which he loved, to take with him.  He was scarcely
+conscious that she was so miserable.
+
+He took the first letter off the file.  It was mauve-tinted,
+and had purple and green thistles.  William sniffed the page.
+
+"Nice scent!  Smell."
+
+And he thrust the sheet under Paul's nose.
+
+"Um!" said Paul, breathing in.  "What d'you call it?  Smell, mother."
+
+His mother ducked her small, fine nose down to the paper.
+
+"I don't want to smell their rubbish," she said, sniffing.
+
+"This girl's father," said William, "is as rich as Croesus. 
+He owns property without end.  She calls me Lafayette, because I
+know French.  'You will see, I've forgiven you'--I like HER forgiving me. 
+'I told mother about you this morning, and she will have much
+pleasure if you come to tea on Sunday, but she will have to get
+father's consent also.  I sincerely hope he will agree.  I will let
+you know how it transpires.  If, however, you---'"
+
+"'Let you know how it' what?" interrupted Mrs. Morel.
+
+"'Transpires'--oh yes!"
+
+"'Transpires!'" repeated Mrs. Morel mockingly.  "I thought
+she was so well educated!"
+
+William felt slightly uncomfortable, and abandoned this maiden,
+giving Paul the corner with the thistles.  He continued to read
+extracts from his letters, some of which amused his mother,
+some of which saddened her and made her anxious for him.
+
+"My lad," she said, "they're very wise.  They know they've
+only got to flatter your vanity, and you press up to them like
+a dog that has its head scratched."
+
+"Well, they can't go on scratching for ever," he replied. 
+"And when they've done, I trot away."
+
+"But one day you'll find a string round your neck that you
+can't pull off," she answered.
+
+"Not me!  I'm equal to any of 'em, mater, they needn't
+flatter themselves."
+
+"You flatter YOURSELF," she said quietly.
+
+Soon there was a heap of twisted black pages, all that remained
+of the file of scented letters, except that Paul had thirty or
+forty pretty tickets from the corners of the notepaper--swallows
+and forget-me-nots and ivy sprays.  And William went to London,
+to start a new life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE YOUNG LIFE OF PAUL
+
+PAUL would be built like his mother, slightly and rather small. 
+His fair hair went reddish, and then dark brown; his eyes were grey. 
+He was a pale, quiet child, with eyes that seemed to listen, and with
+a full, dropping underlip.
+
+As a rule he seemed old for his years.  He was so conscious
+of what other people felt, particularly his mother.  When she
+fretted he understood, and could have no peace.  His soul seemed
+always attentive to her.
+
+As he grew older he became stronger.  William was too far
+removed from him to accept him as a companion.  So the smaller boy
+belonged at first almost entirely to Annie.  She was a tomboy and a
+"flybie-skybie", as her mother called her.  But she was intensely
+fond of her second brother.  So Paul was towed round at the heels
+of Annie, sharing her game.  She raced wildly at lerky with the other
+young wild-cats of the Bottoms.  And always Paul flew beside her,
+living her share of the game, having as yet no part of his own. 
+He was quiet and not noticeable.  But his sister adored him. 
+He always seemed to care for things if she wanted him to.
+
+She had a big doll of which she was fearfully proud, though not
+so fond.  So she laid the doll on the sofa, and covered it with
+an antimacassar, to sleep.  Then she forgot it.  Meantime Paul
+must practise jumping off the sofa arm.  So he jumped crash into
+the face of the hidden doll.  Annie rushed up, uttered a loud wail,
+and sat down to weep a dirge.  Paul remained quite still.
+
+"You couldn't tell it was there, mother; you couldn't tell it
+was there," he repeated over and over.  So long as Annie wept for
+the doll he sat helpless with misery.  Her grief wore itself out. 
+She forgave her brother--he was so much upset.  But a day or two
+afterwards she was shocked.
+
+"Let's make a sacrifice of Arabella," he said.  "Let's burn her."
+
+She was horrified, yet rather fascinated.  She wanted to see
+what the boy would do.  He made an altar of bricks, pulled some of
+the shavings out of Arabella's body, put the waxen fragments into
+the hollow face, poured on a little paraffin, and set the whole thing
+alight.  He watched with wicked satisfaction the drops of wax melt off
+the broken forehead of Arabella, and drop like sweat into the flame. 
+So long as the stupid big doll burned he rejoiced in silence. 
+At the end be poked among the embers with a stick, fished out the arms
+and legs, all blackened, and smashed them under stones.
+
+"That's the sacrifice of Missis Arabella," he said.  "An' I'm
+glad there's nothing left of her."
+
+Which disturbed Annie inwardly, although she could say nothing. 
+He seemed to hate the doll so intensely, because he had broken it.
+
+All the children, but particularly Paul, were peculiarly
+against their father, along with their mother.  Morel continued
+to bully and to drink.  He had periods, months at a time, when he
+made the whole life of the family a misery.  Paul never forgot
+coming home from the Band of Hope one Monday evening and finding
+his mother with her eye swollen and discoloured, his father standing
+on the hearthrug, feet astride, his head down, and William,
+just home from work, glaring at his father.  There was a silence
+as the young children entered, but none of the elders looked round.
+
+William was white to the lips, and his fists were clenched. 
+He waited until the children were silent, watching with children's
+rage and hate; then he said:
+
+"You coward, you daren't do it when I was in."
+
+But Morel's blood was up.  He swung round on his son. 
+William was bigger, but Morel was hard-muscled, and mad with fury.
+
+"Dossn't I?" he shouted.  "Dossn't I?  Ha'e much more o'
+thy chelp, my young jockey, an' I'll rattle my fist about thee. 
+Ay, an' I sholl that, dost see?"
+
+Morel crouched at the knees and showed his fist in an ugly,
+almost beast-like fashion.  William was white with rage.
+
+"Will yer?" he said, quiet and intense.  "It 'ud be the
+last time, though."
+
+Morel danced a little nearer, crouching, drawing back his fist
+to strike.  William put his fists ready.  A light came into his
+blue eyes, almost like a laugh.  He watched his father.  Another word,
+and the men would have begun to fight.  Paul hoped they would. 
+The three children sat pale on the sofa.
+
+"Stop it, both of you," cried Mrs. Morel in a hard voice. 
+"We've had enough for ONE night.  And YOU,"
+she said, turning on to her husband, "look at your children!"
+
+Morel glanced at the sofa.
+
+"Look at the children, you nasty little bitch!" he sneered. 
+"Why, what have I done to the children, I should like to know? 
+But they're like yourself; you've put 'em up to your own tricks and
+nasty ways--you've learned 'em in it, you 'ave."
+
+She refused to answer him.  No one spoke.  After a while he
+threw his boots under the table and went to bed.
+
+"Why didn't you let me have a go at him?" said William,
+when his father was upstairs.  "I could easily have beaten him."
+
+"A nice thing--your own father," she replied.
+
+"'FATHER!'" repeated William.  "Call HIM MY father!"
+
+"Well, he is--and so---"
+
+"But why don't you let me settle him?  I could do, easily."
+
+"The idea!" she cried.  "It hasn't come to THAT yet."
+
+"No," he said, "it's come to worse.  Look at yourself. 
+WHY didn't you let me give it him?"
+
+"Because I couldn't bear it, so never think of it,"
+she cried quickly.
+
+And the children went to bed, miserably.
+
+When William was growing up, the family moved from the Bottoms
+to a house on the brow of the hill, commanding a view of the valley,
+which spread out like a convex cockle-shell, or a clamp-shell, before it. 
+In front of the house was a huge old ash-tree. The west wind,
+sweeping from Derbyshire, caught the houses with full force,
+and the tree shrieked again.  Morel liked it.
+
+"It's music," he said.  "It sends me to sleep."
+
+But Paul and Arthur and Annie hated it.  To Paul it became
+almost a demoniacal noise.  The winter of their first year
+in the new house their father was very bad.  The children played
+in the street, on the brim of the wide, dark valley, until eight
+o'clock. Then they went to bed.  Their mother sat sewing below. 
+Having such a great space in front of the house gave the children
+a feeling of night, of vastness, and of terror.  This terror came
+in from the shrieking of the tree and the anguish of the home discord. 
+Often Paul would wake up, after he had been asleep a long time,
+aware of thuds downstairs.  Instantly he was wide awake.  Then he
+heard the booming shouts of his father, come home nearly drunk, then the
+sharp replies of his mother, then the bang, bang of his father's fist on
+the table, and the nasty snarling shout as the man's voice got higher. 
+And then the whole was drowned in a piercing medley of shrieks
+and cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree. The children
+lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the wind to hear
+what their father was doing.  He might hit their mother again. 
+There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness,
+and a sense of blood.  They lay with their hearts in the grip of an
+intense anguish.  The wind came through the tree fiercer and fiercer. 
+All the chords of the great harp hummed, whistled, and shrieked. 
+And then came the horror of the sudden silence, silence everywhere,
+outside and downstairs.  What was it?  Was it a silence of blood? 
+What had he done?
+
+The children lay and breathed the darkness.  And then, at last,
+they heard their father throw down his boots and tramp upstairs
+in his stockinged feet.  Still they listened.  Then at last,
+if the wind allowed, they heard the water of the tap drumming into
+the kettle, which their mother was filling for morning, and they
+could go to sleep in peace.
+
+So they were happy in the morning--happy, very happy playing,
+dancing at night round the lonely lamp-post in the midst of
+the darkness.  But they had one tight place of anxiety in their hearts,
+one darkness in their eyes, which showed all their lives.
+
+Paul hated his father.  As a boy he had a fervent private religion.
+
+"Make him stop drinking," he prayed every night.  "Lord, let my
+father die," he prayed very often.  "Let him not be killed at pit,"
+he prayed when, after tea, the father did not come home from work.
+
+That was another time when the family suffered intensely. 
+The children came from school and had their teas.  On the hob
+the big black saucepan was simmering, the stew-jar was in the oven,
+ready for Morel's dinner.  He was expected at five o'clock. But for
+months he would stop and drink every night on his way from work.
+
+In the winter nights, when it was cold, and grew dark early,
+Mrs. Morel would put a brass candlestick on the table, light a
+tallow candle to save the gas.  The children finished their
+bread-and-butter, or dripping, and were ready to go out to play. 
+But if Morel had not come they faltered.  The sense of his sitting
+in all his pit-dirt, drinking, after a long day's work, not coming
+home and eating and washing, but sitting, getting drunk, on an empty stomach,
+made Mrs. Morel unable to bear herself.  From her the feeling was
+transmitted to the other children.  She never suffered alone any more: 
+the children suffered with her.
+
+Paul went out to play with the rest.  Down in the great trough
+of twilight, tiny clusters of lights burned where the pits were. 
+A few last colliers straggled up the dim field path.  The lamplighter
+came along.  No more colliers came.  Darkness shut down over the valley;
+work was done.  It was night.
+
+Then Paul ran anxiously into the kitchen.  The one candle still
+burned on the table, the big fire glowed red.  Mrs. Morel sat alone. 
+On the hob the saucepan steamed; the dinner-plate lay waiting
+on the table.  All the room was full of the sense of waiting,
+waiting for the man who was sitting in his pit-dirt, dinnerless,
+some mile away from home, across the darkness, drinking himself drunk. 
+Paul stood in the doorway.
+
+"Has my dad come?" he asked.
+
+"You can see he hasn't," said Mrs. Morel, cross with the
+futility of the question.
+
+Then the boy dawdled about near his mother.  They shared
+the same anxiety.  Presently Mrs. Morel went out and strained
+the potatoes.
+
+"They're ruined and black," she said; "but what do I care?"
+
+Not many words were spoken.  Paul almost hated his mother
+for suffering because his father did not come home from work.
+
+"What do you bother yourself for?" he said.  "If he wants
+to stop and get drunk, why don't you let him?"
+
+"Let him!" flashed Mrs. Morel.  "You may well say 'let him'."
+
+She knew that the man who stops on the way home from work is on a
+quick way to ruining himself and his home.  The children were yet young,
+and depended on the breadwinner.  William gave her the sense of relief,
+providing her at last with someone to turn to if Morel failed.  But
+the tense atmosphere of the room on these waiting evenings was the same.
+
+The minutes ticked away.  At six o'clock still the cloth lay
+on the table, still the dinner stood waiting, still the same sense
+of anxiety and expectation in the room.  The boy could not stand it
+any longer.  He could not go out and play.  So he ran in to Mrs. Inger,
+next door but one, for her to talk to him.  She had no children. 
+Her husband was good to her but was in a shop, and came home late.
+So, when she saw the lad at the door, she called:
+
+"Come in, Paul."
+
+The two sat talking for some time, when suddenly
+the boy rose, saying:
+
+"Well, I'll be going and seeing if my mother wants an errand doing."
+
+He pretended to be perfectly cheerful, and did not tell his
+friend what ailed him.  Then he ran indoors.
+
+Morel at these times came in churlish and hateful.
+
+"This is a nice time to come home," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Wha's it matter to yo' what time I come whoam?" he shouted.
+
+And everybody in the house was still, because he was dangerous. 
+He ate his food in the most brutal manner possible, and, when he
+had done, pushed all the pots in a heap away from him, to lay his
+arms on the table.  Then he went to sleep.
+
+Paul hated his father so.  The collier's small, mean head,
+with its black hair slightly soiled with grey, lay on the bare arms,
+and the face, dirty and inflamed, with a fleshy nose and thin,
+paltry brows, was turned sideways, asleep with beer and weariness
+and nasty temper.  If anyone entered suddenly, or a noise were made,
+the man looked up and shouted:
+
+"I'll lay my fist about thy y'ead, I'm tellin' thee, if tha
+doesna stop that clatter!  Dost hear?"
+
+And the two last words, shouted in a bullying fashion,
+usually at Annie, made the family writhe with hate of the man.
+
+He was shut out from all family affairs.  No one told him anything. 
+The children, alone with their mother, told her all about the
+day's happenings, everything.  Nothing had really taken place in
+them until it was told to their mother.  But as soon as the father
+came in, everything stopped.  He was like the scotch in the smooth,
+happy machinery of the home.  And he was always aware of this fall
+of silence on his entry, the shutting off of life, the unwelcome. 
+But now it was gone too far to alter.
+
+He would dearly have liked the children to talk to him,
+but they could not.  Sometimes Mrs. Morel would say:
+
+"You ought to tell your father."
+
+Paul won a prize in a competition in a child's paper. 
+Everybody was highly jubilant.
+
+"Now you'd better tell your father when be comes in,"
+said Mrs. Morel.  "You know how be carries on and says he's never
+told anything."
+
+"All right," said Paul.  But he would almost rather have
+forfeited the prize than have to tell his father.
+
+"I've won a prize in a competition, dad," he said. 
+Morel turned round to him.
+
+"Have you, my boy?  What sort of a competition?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--about famous women."
+
+"And how much is the prize, then, as you've got?"
+
+"It's a book."
+
+"Oh, indeed! "
+
+"About birds."
+
+"Hm--hm! "
+
+And that was all.  Conversation was impossible between the
+father and any other member of the family.  He was an outsider. 
+He had denied the God in him.
+
+The only times when he entered again into the life of his own people
+was when he worked, and was happy at work.  Sometimes, in the evening,
+he cobbled the boots or mended the kettle or his pit-bottle. Then
+he always wanted several attendants, and the children enjoyed it. 
+They united with him in the work, in the actual doing of something,
+when he was his real self again.
+
+He was a good workman, dexterous, and one who, when he was in a
+good humour, always sang.  He had whole periods, months, almost years,
+of friction and nasty temper.  Then sometimes he was jolly again. 
+It was nice to see him run with a piece of red-hot iron into
+the scullery, crying:
+
+"Out of my road--out of my road!"
+
+Then he hammered the soft, red-glowing stuff on his iron goose,
+and made the shape he wanted.  Or he sat absorbed for a moment,
+soldering.  Then the children watched with joy as the metal sank
+suddenly molten, and was shoved about against the nose of the
+soldering-iron, while the room was full of a scent of burnt resin
+and hot tin, and Morel was silent and intent for a minute.  He always
+sang when he mended boots because of the jolly sound of hammering. 
+And he was rather happy when he sat putting great patches on his
+moleskin pit trousers, which he would often do, considering them
+too dirty, and the stuff too hard, for his wife to mend.
+
+But the best time for the young children was when he made fuses. 
+Morel fetched a sheaf of long sound wheat-straws from the attic. 
+These he cleaned with his hand, till each one gleamed like a
+stalk of gold, after which he cut the straws into lengths of
+about six inches, leaving, if he could, a notch at the bottom
+of each piece.  He always had a beautifully sharp knife that could
+cut a straw clean without hurting it.  Then he set in the middle
+of the table a heap of gunpowder, a little pile of black grains
+upon the white-scrubbed board.  He made and trimmed the straws
+while Paul and Annie rifled and plugged them.  Paul loved to see
+the black grains trickle down a crack in his palm into the mouth
+of the straw, peppering jollily downwards till the straw was full. 
+Then he bunged up the mouth with a bit of soap--which he got on
+his thumb-nail from a pat in a saucer--and the straw was finished.
+
+"Look, dad!" he said.
+
+"That's right, my beauty," replied Morel, who was peculiarly
+lavish of endearments to his second son.  Paul popped the fuse into
+the powder-tin, ready for the morning, when Morel would take it
+to the pit, and use it to fire a shot that would blast the coal down.
+
+Meantime Arthur, still fond of his father, would lean
+on the arm of Morel's chair and say:
+
+"Tell us about down pit, daddy."
+
+This Morel loved to do.
+
+"Well, there's one little 'oss--we call 'im Taffy," he would begin. 
+"An' he's a fawce 'un!"
+
+Morel had a warm way of telling a story.  He made one feel
+Taffy's cunning.
+
+"He's a brown 'un," he would answer, "an' not very high. 
+Well, he comes i' th' stall wi' a rattle, an' then yo' 'ear 'im sneeze.
+
+"'Ello, Taff,' you say, 'what art sneezin' for?  Bin ta'ein'
+some snuff?'
+
+"An' 'e sneezes again.  Then he slives up an' shoves 'is 'ead
+on yer, that cadin'.
+
+"'What's want, Taff?' yo' say."
+
+"And what does he?"  Arthur always asked.
+
+"He wants a bit o' bacca, my duckie."
+
+This story of Taffy would go on interminably, and everybody
+loved it.
+
+Or sometimes it was a new tale.
+
+"An' what dost think, my darlin'? When I went to put my coat
+on at snap-time, what should go runnin' up my arm but a mouse.
+
+"'Hey up, theer!'  I shouts.
+
+"An' I wor just in time ter get 'im by th' tail."
+
+"And did you kill it?"
+
+"I did, for they're a nuisance.  The place is fair snied wi' 'em."
+
+"An' what do they live on?"
+
+"The corn as the 'osses drops--an' they'll get in your pocket an'
+eat your snap, if you'll let 'em--no matter where yo' hing your coat--
+the slivin', nibblin' little nuisances, for they are."
+
+These happy evenings could not take place unless Morel
+had some job to do.  And then he always went to bed very early,
+often before the children.  There was nothing remaining for him
+to stay up for, when he had finished tinkering, and had skimmed
+the headlines of the newspaper.
+
+And the children felt secure when their father was in bed. 
+They lay and talked softly a while.  Then they started as the lights
+went suddenly sprawling over the ceiling from the lamps that swung
+in the hands of the colliers tramping by outside, going to take
+the nine o'clock shift.  They listened to the voices of the men,
+imagined them dipping down into the dark valley.  Sometimes they
+went to the window and watched the three or four lamps growing
+tinier and tinier, swaying down the fields in the darkness. 
+Then it was a joy to rush back to bed and cuddle closely in
+the warmth.
+
+Paul was rather a delicate boy, subject to bronchitis. 
+The others were all quite strong; so this was another reason
+for his mother's difference in feeling for him.  One day he came
+home at dinner-time feeling ill.  But it was not a family to make
+any fuss.
+
+"What's the matter with YOU?" his mother asked sharply.
+
+"Nothing," he replied.
+
+But he ate no dinner.
+
+"If you eat no dinner, you're not going to school," she said.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"That's why."
+
+So after dinner he lay down on the sofa, on the warm chintz
+cushions the children loved.  Then he fell into a kind of doze. 
+That afternoon Mrs. Morel was ironing.  She listened to the small,
+restless noise the boy made in his throat as she worked.  Again rose
+in her heart the old, almost weary feeling towards him.  She had
+never expected him to live.  And yet he had a great vitality in his young body. 
+Perhaps it would have been a little relief to her if he had died. 
+She always felt a mixture of anguish in her love for him.
+
+He, in his semi-conscious sleep, was vaguely aware of
+the clatter of the iron on the iron-stand, of the faint thud,
+thud on the ironing-board. Once roused, he opened his eyes to see
+his mother standing on the hearthrug with the hot iron near
+her cheek, listening, as it were, to the heat.  Her still face,
+with the mouth closed tight from suffering and disillusion and
+self-denial, and her nose the smallest bit on one side, and her blue
+eyes so young, quick, and warm, made his heart contract with love. 
+When she was quiet, so, she looked brave and rich with life, but as
+if she had been done out of her rights.  It hurt the boy keenly,
+this feeling about her that she had never had her life's fulfilment: 
+and his own incapability to make up to her hurt him with a sense of
+impotence, yet made him patiently dogged inside.  It was his childish aim.
+
+She spat on the iron, and a little ball of spit bounded,
+raced off the dark, glossy surface.  Then, kneeling, she rubbed
+the iron on the sack lining of the hearthrug vigorously.  She was
+warm in the ruddy firelight.  Paul loved the way she crouched
+and put her head on one side.  Her movements were light and quick. 
+It was always a pleasure to watch her.  Nothing she ever did,
+no movement she ever made, could have been found fault with by
+her children.  The room was warm and full of the scent of hot linen. 
+Later on the clergyman came and talked softly with her.
+
+Paul was laid up with an attack of bronchitis.  He did not
+mind much.  What happened happened, and it was no good kicking
+against the pricks.  He loved the evenings, after eight o'clock,
+when the light was put out, and he could watch the fire-flames spring
+over the darkness of the walls and ceiling; could watch huge shadows
+waving and tossing, till the room seemed full of men who battled silently.
+
+On retiring to bed, the father would come into the sickroom. 
+He was always very gentle if anyone were ill.  But he disturbed the
+atmosphere for the boy.
+
+"Are ter asleep, my darlin'?" Morel asked softly.
+
+"No; is my mother comin'?"
+
+"She's just finishin' foldin' the clothes.  Do you want anything?" 
+Morel rarely "thee'd" his son.
+
+"I don't want nothing.  But how long will she be?"
+
+"Not long, my duckie."
+
+The father waited undecidedly on the hearthrug for a moment
+or two.  He felt his son did not want him.  Then he went to the top
+of the stairs and said to his wife:
+
+"This childt's axin' for thee; how long art goin' to be?"
+
+"Until I've finished, good gracious!  Tell him to go to sleep."
+
+"She says you're to go to sleep," the father repeated gently
+to Paul.
+
+"Well, I want HER to come," insisted the boy.
+
+"He says he can't go off till you come," Morel called downstairs.
+
+"Eh, dear!  I shan't be long.  And do stop shouting downstairs. 
+There's the other children---"
+
+Then Morel came again and crouched before the bedroom fire. 
+He loved a fire dearly.
+
+"She says she won't be long," he said.
+
+He loitered about indefinitely.  The boy began to get feverish
+with irritation.  His father's presence seemed to aggravate all
+his sick impatience.  At last Morel, after having stood looking
+at his son awhile, said softly:
+
+"Good-night, my darling."
+
+"Good-night," Paul replied, turning round in relief to be alone.
+
+Paul loved to sleep with his mother.  Sleep is still most perfect,
+in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. 
+The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from
+the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body
+and soul completely in its healing.  Paul lay against her and slept,
+and got better; whilst she, always a bad sleeper, fell later on
+into a profound sleep that seemed to give her faith.
+
+In convalescence he would sit up in bed, see the fluffy
+horses feeding at the troughs in the field, scattering their hay
+on the trodden yellow snow; watch the miners troop home--small,
+black figures trailing slowly in gangs across the white field. 
+Then the night came up in dark blue vapour from the snow.
+
+In convalescence everything was wonderful.  The snowflakes,
+suddenly arriving on the window-pane, clung there a moment like swallows,
+then were gone, and a drop of water was crawling down the glass. 
+The snowflakes whirled round the corner of the house,
+like pigeons dashing by.  Away across the valley the little black
+train crawled doubtfully over the great whiteness.
+
+While they were so poor, the children were delighted if they
+could do anything to help economically.  Annie and Paul and Arthur
+went out early in the morning, in summer, looking for mushrooms,
+hunting through the wet grass, from which the larks were rising,
+for the white-skinned, wonderful naked bodies crouched secretly in
+the green.  And if they got half a pound they felt exceedingly happy: 
+there was the joy of finding something, the joy of accepting something
+straight from the hand of Nature, and the joy of contributing to
+the family exchequer.
+
+But the most important harvest, after gleaning for frumenty,
+was the blackberries.  Mrs. Morel must buy fruit for puddings on
+the Saturdays; also she liked blackberries.  So Paul and Arthur scoured
+the coppices and woods and old quarries, so long as a blackberry
+was to be found, every week-end going on their search.  In that
+region of mining villages blackberries became a comparative rarity. 
+But Paul hunted far and wide.  He loved being out in the country,
+among the bushes.  But he also could not bear to go home to his
+mother empty.  That, he felt, would disappoint her, and he would
+have died rather.
+
+"Good gracious!" she would exclaim as the lads came in,
+late, and tired to death, and hungry, "wherever have you been?"
+
+"Well," replied Paul, "there wasn't any, so we went over
+Misk Hills.  And look here, our mother!"
+
+She peeped into the basket.
+
+"Now, those are fine ones!" she exclaimed.
+
+"And there's over two pounds-isn't there over two pounds"?
+
+She tried the basket.
+
+"Yes," she answered doubtfully.
+
+Then Paul fished out a little spray.  He always brought her
+one spray, the best he could find.
+
+"Pretty!" she said, in a curious tone, of a woman accepting
+a love-token.
+
+The boy walked all day, went miles and miles, rather than
+own himself beaten and come home to her empty-handed. She never
+realised this, whilst he was young.  She was a woman who waited
+for her children to grow up.  And William occupied her chiefly.
+
+But when William went to Nottingham, and was not so much at
+home, the mother made a companion of Paul.  The latter was
+unconsciously jealous of his brother, and William was jealous of him. 
+At the same time, they were good friends.
+
+Mrs. Morel's intimacy with her second son was more subtle and fine,
+perhaps not so passionate as with her eldest.  It was the rule
+that Paul should fetch the money on Friday afternoons.  The colliers
+of the five pits were paid on Fridays, but not individually. 
+All the earnings of each stall were put down to the chief butty,
+as contractor, and he divided the wages again, either in the
+public-house or in his own home.  So that the children could
+fetch the money, school closed early on Friday afternoons. 
+Each of the Morel children--William, then Annie, then Paul--had fetched
+the money on Friday afternoons, until they went themselves to work. 
+Paul used to set off at half-past three, with a little calico bag
+in his pocket.  Down all the paths, women, girls, children, and men
+were seen trooping to the offices.
+
+These offices were quite handsome:  a new, red-brick building,
+almost like a mansion, standing in its own grounds at the end of
+Greenhill Lane.  The waiting-room was the hall, a long, bare room
+paved with blue brick, and having a seat all round, against the wall. 
+Here sat the colliers in their pit-dirt. They had come up early. 
+The women and children usually loitered about on the red gravel paths. 
+Paul always examined the grass border, and the big grass bank,
+because in it grew tiny pansies and tiny forget-me-nots. There
+was a sound of many voices.  The women had on their Sunday hats. 
+The girls chattered loudly.  Little dogs ran here and there. 
+The green shrubs were silent all around.
+
+Then from inside came the cry "Spinney Park--Spinney Park." 
+All the folk for Spinney Park trooped inside.  When it was time
+for Bretty to be paid, Paul went in among the crowd.  The pay-room
+was quite small.  A counter went across, dividing it into half. 
+Behind the counter stood two men--Mr. Braithwaite and his clerk,
+Mr. Winterbottom.  Mr. Braithwaite was large, somewhat of the stern
+patriarch in appearance, having a rather thin white beard. 
+He was usually muffled in an enormous silk neckerchief, and right
+up to the hot summer a huge fire burned in the open grate. 
+No window was open.  Sometimes in winter the air scorched the throats
+of the people, coming in from the freshness.  Mr. Winterbottom
+was rather small and fat, and very bald.  He made remarks that were
+not witty, whilst his chief launched forth patriarchal admonitions
+against the colliers.
+
+The room was crowded with miners in their pit-dirt, men who had
+been home and changed, and women, and one or two children, and usually
+a dog.  Paul was quite small, so it was often his fate to be jammed
+behind the legs of the men, near the fire which scorched him. 
+He knew the order of the names--they went according to stall number.
+
+"Holliday," came the ringing voice of Mr. Braithwaite. 
+Then Mrs. Holliday stepped silently forward, was paid, drew aside.
+
+"Bower--John Bower."
+
+A boy stepped to the counter.  Mr. Braithwaite, large and irascible,
+glowered at him over his spectacles.
+
+"John Bower!" he repeated.
+
+"It's me," said the boy.
+
+"Why, you used to 'ave a different nose than that," said glossy
+Mr. Winterbottom, peering over the counter.  The people tittered,
+thinking of John Bower senior.
+
+"How is it your father's not come!" said Mr. Braithwaite,
+in a large and magisterial voice.
+
+"He's badly," piped the boy.
+
+"You should tell him to keep off the drink," pronounced the
+great cashier.
+
+"An' niver mind if he puts his foot through yer," said a mocking
+voice from behind.
+
+All the men laughed.  The large and important cashier looked
+down at his next sheet.
+
+"Fred Pilkington!" he called, quite indifferent.
+
+Mr. Braithwaite was an important shareholder in the firm.
+
+Paul knew his turn was next but one, and his heart began to beat. 
+He was pushed against the chimney-piece. His calves were burning. 
+But he did not hope to get through the wall of men.
+
+"Walter Morel!" came the ringing voice.
+
+"Here!" piped Paul, small and inadequate.
+
+"Morel--Walter Morel!" the cashier repeated, his finger
+and thumb on the invoice, ready to pass on.
+
+Paul was suffering convulsions of self-consciousness, and could
+not or would not shout.  The backs of the men obliterated him. 
+Then Mr. Winterbottom came to the rescue.
+
+"He's here.  Where is he?  Morel's lad?"
+
+The fat, red, bald little man peered round with keen eyes. 
+He pointed at the fireplace.  The colliers looked round, moved aside,
+and disclosed the boy.
+
+"Here he is!" said Mr. Winterbottom.
+
+Paul went to the counter.
+
+"Seventeen pounds eleven and fivepence.  Why don't you
+shout up when you're called?" said Mr. Braithwaite.  He banged
+on to the invoice a five-pound bag of silver, then in a delicate
+and pretty movement, picked up a little ten-pound column of gold,
+and plumped it beside the silver.  The gold slid in a bright stream
+over the paper.  The cashier finished counting off the money;
+the boy dragged the whole down the counter to Mr. Winterbottom,
+to whom the stoppages for rent and tools must be paid.  Here he
+suffered again.
+
+"Sixteen an' six," said Mr. Winterbottom.
+
+The lad was too much upset to count.  He pushed forward some
+loose silver and half a sovereign.
+
+"How much do you think you've given me?" asked Mr. Winterbottom.
+
+The boy looked at him, but said nothing.  He had not the
+faintest notion.
+
+"Haven't you got a tongue in your head?"
+
+Paul bit his lip, and pushed forward some more silver.
+
+"Don't they teach you to count at the Board-school?" he asked.
+
+"Nowt but algibbra an' French," said a collier.
+
+"An' cheek an' impidence," said another.
+
+Paul was keeping someone waiting.  With trembling fingers he
+got his money into the bag and slid out.  He suffered the tortures
+of the damned on these occasions.
+
+His relief, when he got outside, and was walking along the
+Mansfield Road, was infinite.  On the park wall the mosses were green. 
+There were some gold and some white fowls pecking under the apple
+trees of an orchard.  The colliers were walking home in a stream. 
+The boy went near the wall, self-consciously. He knew many of the men,
+but could not recognise them in their dirt.  And this was a new
+torture to him.
+
+When he got down to the New Inn, at Bretty, his father was not
+yet come.  Mrs. Wharmby, the landlady, knew him.  His grandmother,
+Morel's mother, had been Mrs. Wharmby's friend.
+
+"Your father's not come yet," said the landlady, in the peculiar
+half-scornful, half-patronising voice of a woman who talks chiefly
+to grown men.  "Sit you down."
+
+Paul sat down on the edge of the bench in the bar. 
+Some colliers were "reckoning"--sharing out their money--in a corner;
+others came in.  They all glanced at the boy without speaking. 
+At last Morel came; brisk, and with something of an air, even in
+his blackness.
+
+"Hello!" he said rather tenderly to his son.  "Have you bested me? 
+Shall you have a drink of something?"
+
+Paul and all the children were bred up fierce anti-alcoholists,
+and he would have suffered more in drinking a lemonade before all
+the men than in having a tooth drawn.
+
+The landlady looked at him de haut en bas, rather pitying,
+and at the same time, resenting his clear, fierce morality. 
+Paul went home, glowering.  He entered the house silently. 
+Friday was baking day, and there was usually a hot bun.  His mother
+put it before him.
+
+Suddenly he turned on her in a fury, his eyes flashing:
+
+"I'm NOT going to the office any more," he said.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" his mother asked in surprise. 
+His sudden rages rather amused her.
+
+"I'm NOT going any more," he declared.
+
+"Oh, very well, tell your father so."
+
+He chewed his bun as if he hated it.
+
+"I'm not--I'm not going to fetch the money."
+
+"Then one of Carlin's children can go; they'd be glad enough
+of the sixpence," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+This sixpence was Paul's only income.  It mostly went in buying
+birthday presents; but it WAS an income, and he treasured it. 
+But---
+
+"They can have it, then!" he said.  "I don't want it."
+
+"Oh, very well," said his mother.  "But you needn't bully ME
+about it."
+
+"They're hateful, and common, and hateful, they are,
+and I'm not going any more.  Mr. Braithwaite drops his 'h's', an'
+Mr. Winterbottom says 'You was'."
+
+"And is that why you won't go any more?" smiled Mrs. Morel.
+
+The boy was silent for some time.  His face was pale, his eyes
+dark and furious.  His mother moved
+about at her work, taking no notice of him.
+
+"They always stan' in front of me, so's I can't get out,"
+he said.
+
+"Well, my lad, you've only to ASK them," she replied.
+
+"An' then Alfred Winterbottom says, 'What do they teach you
+at the Board-school?'"
+
+"They never taught HIM much," said Mrs. Morel, "that is a fact--
+neither manners nor wit--and his cunning he was born with."
+
+So, in her own way, she soothed him. 
+His ridiculous hypersensitiveness made her
+heart ache.  And sometimes the fury in his eyes
+roused her, made her sleeping soul lift up its head a moment, surprised.
+
+"What was the cheque?" she asked.
+
+"Seventeen pounds eleven and fivepence, and sixteen
+and six stoppages," replied the boy.  "It's a good week;
+and only five shillings stoppages for my father."
+
+So she was able to calculate how much her husband had earned,
+and could call him to account if he gave her short money. 
+Morel always kept to himself the secret of the week's amount.
+
+Friday was the baking night and market night.  It was the
+rule that Paul should stay at home and bake.  He loved to stop
+in and draw or read; he was very fond of drawing.  Annie always
+"gallivanted" on Friday nights; Arthur was enjoying himself as usual. 
+So the boy remained alone.
+
+Mrs. Morel loved her marketing.  In the tiny market-place on
+the top of the hill, where four roads, from Nottingham and Derby,
+Ilkeston and Mansfield, meet, many stalls were erected.  Brakes ran
+in from surrounding villages.  The market-place was full of women,
+the streets packed with men.  It was amazing to see so many men
+everywhere in the streets.  Mrs. Morel usually quarrelled with
+her lace woman, sympathised with her fruit man--who was a gabey,
+but his wife was a bad 'un--laughed with the fish man--who was
+a scamp but so droll--put the linoleum man in his place, was cold
+with the odd-wares man, and only went to the crockery man when she
+was driven--or drawn by the cornflowers on a little dish; then she
+was coldly polite.
+
+"I wondered how much that little dish was," she said.
+
+"Sevenpence to you."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+She put the dish down and walked away; but she could not leave
+the market-place without it.  Again she went by where the pots
+lay coldly on the floor, and she glanced at the dish furtively,
+pretending not to.
+
+She was a little woman, in a bonnet and a black costume. 
+Her bonnet was in its third year; it was a great grievance to Annie.
+
+"Mother!" the girl implored, "don't wear that nubbly little bonnet."
+
+"Then what else shall I wear," replied the mother tartly. 
+"And I'm sure it's right enough."
+
+It had started with a tip; then had had flowers; now was
+reduced to black lace and a bit of jet.
+
+"It looks rather come down," said Paul.  "Couldn't you give
+it a pick-me-up?"
+
+"I'll jowl your head for impudence," said Mrs. Morel, and she
+tied the strings of the black bonnet valiantly under her chin.
+
+She glanced at the dish again.  Both she and her enemy,
+the pot man, had an uncomfortable feeling, as if there were something
+between them.  Suddenly he shouted:
+
+"Do you want it for fivepence?"
+
+She started.  Her heart hardened; but then she stooped and took
+up her dish.
+
+"I'll have it," she said.
+
+"Yer'll do me the favour, like?" he said.  "Yer'd better spit
+in it, like yer do when y'ave something give yer."
+
+Mrs. Morel paid him the fivepence in a cold manner.
+
+"I don't see you give it me," she said.  "You wouldn't let me
+have it for fivepence if you didn't want to."
+
+"In this flamin', scrattlin' place you may count yerself lucky
+if you can give your things away," he growled.
+
+"Yes; there are bad times, and good," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+But she had forgiven the pot man.  They were friends. 
+She dare now finger his pots.  So she was happy.
+
+Paul was waiting for her.  He loved her home-coming. She
+was always her best so--triumphant, tired, laden with parcels,
+feeling rich in spirit.  He heard her quick, light step in the entry
+and looked up from his drawing.
+
+"Oh!" she sighed, smiling at him from the doorway.
+
+"My word, you ARE loaded!" he exclaimed, putting down his brush.
+
+"I am!" she gasped.  "That brazen Annie said she'd meet me. 
+SUCH a weight!"
+
+She dropped her string bag and her packages on the table.
+
+"Is the bread done?" she asked, going to the oven.
+
+"The last one is soaking," he replied.  "You needn't look,
+I've not forgotten it."
+
+"Oh, that pot man!" she said, closing the oven door. 
+"You know what a wretch I've said he was?  Well, I don't think he's
+quite so bad."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+The boy was attentive to her.  She took off her little
+black bonnet.
+
+"No. I think he can't make any money--well, it's everybody's
+cry alike nowadays--and it makes him disagreeable."
+
+"It would ME," said Paul.
+
+"Well, one can't wonder at it.  And he let me have--how much
+do you think he let me have THIS for?"
+
+She took the dish out of its rag of newspaper, and stood
+looking on it with joy.
+
+"Show me!" said Paul.
+
+The two stood together gloating over the dish.
+
+"I LOVE cornflowers on things," said Paul.
+
+"Yes, and I thought of the teapot you bought me---"
+
+"One and three," said Paul.
+
+"Fivepence!"
+
+"It's not enough, mother."
+
+"No. Do you know, I fairly sneaked off with it.  But I'd
+been extravagant, I couldn't afford any more.  And he needn't
+have let me have it if he hadn't wanted to."
+
+"No, he needn't, need he," said Paul, and the two comforted
+each other from the fear of having robbed the pot man.
+
+"We c'n have stewed fruit in it," said Paul.
+
+"Or custard, or a jelly," said his mother.
+
+"Or radishes and lettuce," said he.
+
+"Don't forget that bread," she said, her voice bright with glee.
+
+Paul looked in the oven; tapped the loaf on the base.
+
+"It's done," he said, giving it to her.
+
+She tapped it also.
+
+"Yes," she replied, going to unpack her bag.  "Oh, and I'm
+a wicked, extravagant woman.  I know I s'll come to want."
+
+He hopped to her side eagerly, to see her latest extravagance. 
+She unfolded another lump of newspaper and disclosed some roots of
+pansies and of crimson daisies.
+
+"Four penn'orth!" she moaned.
+
+"How CHEAP!" he cried.
+
+"Yes, but I couldn't afford it THIS week of all weeks."
+
+"But lovely!" he cried.
+
+"Aren't they!" she exclaimed, giving way to pure joy. 
+"Paul, look at this yellow one, isn't it--and a face just like an
+old man!"
+
+"Just!" cried Paul, stooping to sniff.  "And smells that nice! 
+But he's a bit splashed."
+
+He ran in the scullery, came back with the flannel, and carefully
+washed the pansy.
+
+"NOW look at him now he's wet!" he said.
+
+"Yes!" she exclaimed, brimful of satisfaction.
+
+The children of Scargill Street felt quite select.  At the
+end where the Morels lived there were not many young things. 
+So the few were more united.  Boys and girls played together,
+the girls joining in the fights and the rough games, the boys taking
+part in the dancing games and rings and make-belief of the girls.
+
+Annie and Paul and Arthur loved the winter evenings,
+when it was not wet.  They stayed indoors till the colliers
+were all gone home, till it was thick dark, and the street would
+be deserted.  Then they tied their scarves round their necks,
+for they scorned overcoats, as all the colliers' children did,
+and went out.  The entry was very dark, and at the end the whole
+great night opened out, in a hollow, with a little tangle of lights
+below where Minton pit lay, and another far away opposite for Selby. 
+The farthest tiny lights seemed to stretch out the darkness for ever. 
+The children looked anxiously down the road at the one lamp-post,
+which stood at the end of the field path.  If the little,
+luminous space were deserted, the two boys felt genuine desolation. 
+They stood with their hands in their pockets under the lamp,
+turning their backs on the night, quite miserable, watching the
+dark houses.  Suddenly a pinafore under a short coat was seen,
+and a long-legged girl came flying up.
+
+"Where's Billy Pillins an' your Annie an' Eddie Dakin?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+But it did not matter so much--there were three now.  They set
+up a game round the lamp-post, till the others rushed up, yelling. 
+Then the play went fast and furious.
+
+There was only this one lamp-post. Behind was the great scoop
+of darkness, as if all the night were there.  In front, another wide,
+dark way opened over the hill brow.  Occasionally somebody came
+out of this way and went into the field down the path.  In a dozen
+yards the night had swallowed them.  The children played on.
+
+They were brought exceedingly close together owing to
+their isolation.  If a quarrel took place, the whole play was spoilt. 
+Arthur was very touchy, and Billy Pillins--really Philips--was worse. 
+Then Paul had to side with Arthur, and on Paul's side went Alice,
+while Billy Pillins always had Emmie Limb and Eddie Dakin to back
+him up.  Then the six would fight, hate with a fury of hatred,
+and flee home in terror.  Paul never forgot, after one of these fierce
+internecine fights, seeing a big red moon lift itself up, slowly,
+between the waste road over the hilltop, steadily, like a great bird. 
+And he thought of the Bible, that the moon should be turned to blood. 
+And the next day he made haste to be friends with Billy Pillins. 
+And then the wild, intense games went on again under the lamp-post,
+surrounded by so much darkness.  Mrs. Morel, going into her parlour,
+would hear the children singing away:
+
+      "My shoes are made of Spanish leather,
+       My socks are made of silk;
+       I wear a ring on every finger,
+       I wash myself in milk."
+
+They sounded so perfectly absorbed in the game as their voices came
+out of the night, that they had the feel of wild creatures singing. 
+It stirred the mother; and she understood when they came in at eight
+o'clock, ruddy, with brilliant eyes, and quick, passionate speech.
+
+They all loved the Scargill Street house for its openness,
+for the great scallop of the world it had in view.  On summer evenings
+the women would stand against the field fence, gossiping, facing
+the west, watching the sunsets flare quickly out, till the Derbyshire
+hills ridged across the crimson far away, like the black crest
+of a newt.
+
+In this summer season the pits never turned full time,
+particularly the soft coal.  Mrs. Dakin, who lived next door
+to Mrs. Morel, going to the field fence to shake her hearthrug,
+would spy men coming slowly up the hill.  She saw at once they
+were colliers.  Then she waited, a tall, thin, shrew-faced woman,
+standing on the hill brow, almost like a menace to the poor colliers
+who were toiling up.  It was only eleven o'clock. From the far-off
+wooded hills the haze that hangs like fine black crape at the back
+of a summer morning had not yet dissipated.  The first man came
+to the stile.  "Chock-chock!" went the gate under his thrust.
+
+"What, han' yer knocked off?" cried Mrs. Dakin.
+
+"We han, missis."
+
+"It's a pity as they letn yer goo," she said sarcastically.
+
+"It is that," replied the man.
+
+"Nay, you know you're flig to come up again," she said.
+
+And the man went on.  Mrs. Dakin, going up her yard,
+spied Mrs. Morel taking the ashes to the ash-pit.
+
+"I reckon Minton's knocked off, missis," she cried.
+
+"Isn't it sickenin!" exclaimed Mrs. Morel in wrath.
+
+"Ha! But I'n just seed Jont Hutchby."
+
+"They might as well have saved their shoe-leather,"
+said Mrs. Morel.  And both women went indoors disgusted.
+
+The colliers, their faces scarcely blackened, were trooping
+home again.  Morel hated to go back.  He loved the sunny morning. 
+But he had gone to pit to work, and to be sent home again spoilt
+his temper.
+
+"Good gracious, at this time!" exclaimed his wife, as he entered.
+
+"Can I help it, woman?" he shouted.
+
+"And I've not done half enough dinner."
+
+"Then I'll eat my bit o' snap as I took with me,"
+he bawled pathetically.  He felt ignominious and sore.
+
+And the children, coming home from school, would wonder to see
+their father eating with his dinner the two thick slices of rather
+dry and dirty bread-and-butter that had been to pit and back.
+
+"What's my dad eating his snap for now?" asked Arthur.
+
+"I should ha'e it holled at me if I didna," snorted Morel.
+
+"What a story!" exclaimed his wife.
+
+"An' is it goin' to be wasted?" said Morel.  "I'm not such
+a extravagant mortal as you lot, with your waste.  If I drop
+a bit of bread at pit, in all the dust an' dirt, I pick it up an'
+eat it."
+
+"The mice would eat it," said Paul.  "It wouldn't be wasted."
+
+"Good bread-an'-butter's not for mice, either," said Morel. 
+"Dirty or not dirty, I'd eat it rather than it should be wasted."
+
+"You might leave it for the mice and pay for it out of your
+next pint," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Oh, might I?" he exclaimed.
+
+They were very poor that autumn.  William had just gone away
+to London, and his mother missed his money.  He sent ten shillings once
+or twice, but he had many things to pay for at first.  His letters
+came regularly once a week.  He wrote a good deal to his mother,
+telling her all his life, how he made friends, and was exchanging
+lessons with a Frenchman, how he enjoyed London.  His mother felt
+again he was remaining to her just as when he was at home.  She wrote
+to him every week her direct, rather witty letters.  All day long,
+as she cleaned the house, she thought of him.  He was in London: 
+he would do well.  Almost, he was like her knight who wore HER
+favour in the battle.
+
+He was coming at Christmas for five days.  There had never
+been such preparations.  Paul and Arthur scoured the land
+for holly and evergreens.  Annie made the pretty paper hoops
+in the old-fashioned way.  And there was unheard-of extravagance
+in the larder.  Mrs. Morel made a big and magnificent cake. 
+Then, feeling queenly, she showed Paul how to blanch almonds. 
+He skinned the long nuts reverently, counting them all, to see not
+one was lost.  It was said that eggs whisked better in a cold place. 
+So the boy stood in the scullery, where the temperature was nearly
+at freezing-point, and whisked and whisked, and flew in excitement
+to his mother as the white of egg grew stiffer and more snowy.
+
+"Just look, mother!  Isn't it lovely?"
+
+And he balanced a bit on his nose, then blew it in the air.
+
+"Now, don't waste it," said the mother.
+
+Everybody was mad with excitement.  William was coming on
+Christmas Eve.  Mrs. Morel surveyed her pantry.  There was a big
+plum cake, and a rice cake, jam tarts, lemon tarts, and mince-pies--
+two enormous dishes.  She was finishing cooking--Spanish tarts
+and cheese-cakes. Everywhere was decorated.  The kissing bunch
+of berried holly hung with bright and glittering things, spun slowly
+over Mrs. Morel's head as she trimmed her little tarts in the kitchen. 
+A great fire roared.  There was a scent of cooked pastry.  He was due
+at seven o'clock, but he would be late.  The three children had gone
+to meet him.  She was alone.  But at a quarter to seven Morel came
+in again.  Neither wife nor husband spoke.  He sat in his armchair,
+quite awkward with excitement, and she quietly went on with her baking. 
+Only by the careful way in which she did things could it be told
+how much moved she was.  The clock ticked on.
+
+"What time dost say he's coming?"  Morel asked for the fifth time.
+
+"The train gets in at half-past six," she replied emphatically.
+
+"Then he'll be here at ten past seven."
+
+"Eh, bless you, it'll be hours late on the Midland,"
+she said indifferently.  But she hoped, by expecting him late,
+to bring him early.  Morel went down the entry to look for him. 
+Then he came back.
+
+"Goodness, man!" she said.  "You're like an ill-sitting hen."
+
+"Hadna you better be gettin' him summat t' eat ready?"
+asked the father.
+
+"There's plenty of time," she answered.
+
+"There's not so much as I can see on," he answered,
+turning crossly in his chair.  She began to clear her table. 
+The kettle was singing.  They waited and waited.
+
+Meantime the three children were on the platform at Sethley Bridge,
+on the Midland main line, two miles from home.  They waited one hour. 
+A train came--he was not there.  Down the line the red and green
+lights shone.  It was very dark and very cold.
+
+"Ask him if the London train's come," said Paul to Annie,
+when they saw a man in a tip cap.
+
+"I'm not," said Annie.  "You be quiet--he might send us off."
+
+But Paul was dying for the man to know they were expecting
+someone by the London train:  it sounded so grand.  Yet he was much
+too much scared of broaching any man, let alone one in a peaked cap,
+to dare to ask.  The three children could scarcely go into the
+waiting-room for fear of being sent away, and for fear
+something should happen whilst they were off the platform.  
+Still they waited in the dark and cold.
+
+"It's an hour an' a half late," said Arthur pathetically.
+
+"Well," said Annie, "it's Christmas Eve."
+
+They all grew silent.  He wasn't coming.  They looked
+down the darkness of the railway.  There was London!  It seemed
+the utter-most of distance.  They thought anything might happen
+if one came from London.  They were all too troubled to talk. 
+Cold, and unhappy, and silent, they huddled together on the platform.
+
+At last, after more than two hours, they saw the lights of an
+engine peering round, away down the darkness.  A porter ran out. 
+The children drew back with beating hearts.  A great train,
+bound for Manchester, drew up.  Two doors opened, and from one
+of them, William.  They flew to him.  He handed parcels to them
+cheerily, and immediately began to explain that this great train had
+stopped for HIS sake at such a small station as Sethley Bridge: 
+it was not booked to stop.
+
+Meanwhile the parents were getting anxious.  The table was set,
+the chop was cooked, everything was ready.  Mrs. Morel put on
+her black apron.  She was wearing her best dress.  Then she sat,
+pretending to read.  The minutes were a torture to her.
+
+"H'm!" said Morel.  "It's an hour an' a ha'ef."
+
+"And those children waiting!" she said.
+
+"Th' train canna ha' come in yet," he said.
+
+"I tell you, on Christmas Eve they're HOURS wrong."
+
+They were both a bit cross with each other, so gnawed
+with anxiety.  The ash tree moaned outside in a cold, raw wind. 
+And all that space of night from London home!  Mrs. Morel suffered. 
+The slight click of the works inside the clock irritated her. 
+It was getting so late; it was getting unbearable.
+
+At last there was a sound of voices, and a footstep in the entry.
+
+"Ha's here!" cried Morel, jumping up.
+
+Then he stood back.  The mother ran a few steps towards
+the door and waited.  There was a rush and a patter of feet,
+the door burst open.  William was there.  He dropped his Gladstone
+bag and took his mother in his arms.
+
+"Mater!" he said.
+
+"My boy!" she cried.
+
+And for two seconds, no longer, she clasped him and kissed him. 
+Then she withdrew and said, trying to be quite normal:
+
+"But how late you are!"
+
+"Aren't I!" he cried, turning to his father.  "Well, dad!"
+
+The two men shook hands.
+
+"Well, my lad!"
+
+Morel's eyes were wet.
+
+"We thought tha'd niver be commin'," he said.
+
+"Oh, I'd come!" exclaimed William.
+
+Then the son turned round to his mother.
+
+"But you look well," she said proudly, laughing.
+
+"Well!" he exclaimed.  "I should think so--coming home!"
+
+He was a fine fellow, big, straight, and fearless-looking. He
+looked round at the evergreens and the kissing bunch, and the little
+tarts that lay in their tins on the hearth.
+
+"By jove! mother, it's not different!" he said, as if in relief.
+
+Everybody was still for a second.  Then he suddenly sprang forward,
+picked a tart from the hearth, and pushed it whole into his mouth.
+
+"Well, did iver you see such a parish oven!" the father exclaimed.
+
+He had brought them endless presents.  Every penny he had he had
+spent on them.  There was a sense of luxury overflowing in the house. 
+For his mother there was an umbrella with gold on the pale handle. 
+She kept it to her dying day, and would have lost anything rather
+than that.  Everybody had something gorgeous, and besides, there were
+pounds of unknown sweets:  Turkish delight, crystallised pineapple,
+and such-like things which, the children thought, only the splendour
+of London could provide.  And Paul boasted of these sweets among
+his friends.
+
+"Real pineapple, cut off in slices, and then turned into
+crystal--fair grand!"
+
+Everybody was mad with happiness in the family.  Home was home,
+and they loved it with a passion of love, whatever the suffering
+had been.  There were parties, there were rejoicings.  People came
+in to see William, to see what difference London had made to him. 
+And they all found him "such a gentleman, and SUCH a fine fellow,
+my word"!
+
+When he went away again the children retired to various places
+to weep alone.  Morel went to bed in misery, and Mrs. Morel felt as
+if she were numbed by some drug, as if her feelings were paralysed. 
+She loved him passionately.
+
+He was in the office of a lawyer connected with a large
+shipping firm, and at the midsummer his chief offered him a trip
+in the Mediterranean on one of the boats, for quite a small cost. 
+Mrs. Morel wrote:  "Go, go, my boy.  You may never have a chance again,
+and I should love to think of you cruising there in the Mediterranean
+almost better than to have you at home."  But William came home for
+his fortnight's holiday.  Not even the Mediterranean, which pulled
+at all his young man's desire to travel, and at his poor man's wonder
+at the glamorous south, could take him away when he might come home. 
+That compensated his mother for much.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE
+
+MOREL was rather a heedless man, careless of danger.  So he had
+endless accidents.  Now, when Mrs. Morel heard the rattle of an empty
+coal-cart cease at her entry-end, she ran into the parlour to look,
+expecting almost to see her husband seated in the waggon, his face
+grey under his dirt, his body limp and sick with some hurt or other. 
+If it were he, she would run out to help.
+
+About a year after William went to London, and just after Paul
+had left school, before he got work, Mrs. Morel was upstairs and her
+son was painting in the kitchen--he was very clever with his brush--when
+there came a knock at the door.  Crossly he put down his brush to go. 
+At the same moment his mother opened a window upstairs and looked down.
+
+A pit-lad in his dirt stood on the threshold.
+
+"Is this Walter Morel's?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Morel.  "What is it?"
+
+But she had guessed already.
+
+"Your mester's got hurt," he said.
+
+"Eh, dear me!" she exclaimed.  "It's a wonder if he hadn't, lad. 
+And what's he done this time?"
+
+"I don't know for sure, but it's 'is leg somewhere.  They ta'ein'
+'im ter th' 'ospital."
+
+"Good gracious me!" she exclaimed.  "Eh, dear, what a one he is! 
+There's not five minutes of peace, I'll be hanged if there is! 
+His thumb's nearly better, and now--- Did you see him?"
+
+"I seed him at th' bottom.  An' I seed 'em bring 'im up in
+a tub, an' 'e wor in a dead faint.  But he shouted like anythink
+when Doctor Fraser examined him i' th' lamp cabin--an' cossed an'
+swore, an' said as 'e wor goin' to be ta'en whoam--'e worn't goin'
+ter th' 'ospital."
+
+The boy faltered to an end.
+
+"He WOULD want to come home, so that I can have all the bother. 
+Thank you, my lad.  Eh, dear, if I'm not sick--sick and surfeited,
+I am!"
+
+She came downstairs.  Paul had mechanically resumed his painting.
+
+"And it must be pretty bad if they've taken him to the hospital,"
+she went on.  "But what a CARELESS creature he is!  OTHER men don't
+have all these accidents.  Yes, he WOULD want to put all the burden
+on me.  Eh, dear, just as we WERE getting easy a bit at last. 
+Put those things away, there's no time to be painting now.  What time
+is there a train?  I know I s'll have to go trailing to Keston. 
+I s'll have to leave that bedroom."
+
+"I can finish it," said Paul.
+
+"You needn't. I shall catch the seven o'clock back,
+I should think.  Oh, my blessed heart, the fuss and commotion
+he'll make!  And those granite setts at Tinder Hill--he might
+well call them kidney pebbles--they'll jolt him almost to bits. 
+I wonder why they can't mend them, the state they're in, an'
+all the men as go across in that ambulance.  You'd think they'd
+have a hospital here.  The men bought the ground, and, my sirs,
+there'd be accidents enough to keep it going.  But no, they must
+trail them ten miles in a slow ambulance to Nottingham.  It's a
+crying shame!  Oh, and the fuss he'll make!  I know he will! 
+I wonder who's with him.  Barker, I s'd think.  Poor beggar,
+he'll wish himself anywhere rather.  But he'll look after him, I know. 
+Now there's no telling how long he'll be stuck in that hospital--and
+WON'T he hate it!  But if it's only his leg it's not so bad."
+
+All the time she was getting ready.  Hurriedly taking off her
+bodice, she crouched at the boiler
+while the water ran slowly into her lading-can.
+
+"I wish this boiler was at the bottom of the sea!" she exclaimed,
+wriggling the handle impatiently.  She had very handsome, strong arms,
+rather surprising on a smallish woman.
+
+Paul cleared away, put on the kettle, and set the table.
+
+"There isn't a train till four-twenty," he said. 
+"You've time enough."
+
+"Oh no, I haven't!" she cried, blinking at him over the towel
+as she wiped her face.
+
+"Yes, you have.  You must drink a cup of tea at any rate. 
+Should I come with you to Keston?"
+
+"Come with me?  What for, I should like to know?  Now, what have
+I to take him?  Eh, dear!  His clean shirt--and it's a blessing it
+IS clean.  But it had better be aired.  And stockings--he won't want
+them--and a towel, I suppose; and handkerchiefs.  Now what else?"
+
+"A comb, a knife and fork and spoon," said Paul.  His father
+had been in the hospital before.
+
+"Goodness knows what sort of state his feet were in,"
+continued Mrs. Morel, as she combed her long brown hair, that was
+fine as silk, and was touched now with grey.  "He's very particular
+to wash himself to the waist, but below he thinks doesn't matter. 
+But there, I suppose they see plenty like it."
+
+Paul had laid the table.  He cut his mother one or two pieces
+of very thin bread and butter.
+
+"Here you are," he said, putting her cup of tea in her place.
+
+"I can't be bothered!" she exclaimed crossly.
+
+"Well, you've got to, so there, now it's put out ready,"
+he insisted.
+
+So she sat down and sipped her tea, and ate a little, in silence. 
+She was thinking.
+
+In a few minutes she was gone, to walk the two and a half miles
+to Keston Station.  All the things she was taking him she had in her
+bulging string bag.  Paul watched her go up the road between the
+hedges--a little, quick-stepping figure, and his heart ached for her,
+that she was thrust forward again into pain and trouble.  And she,
+tripping so quickly in her anxiety, felt at the back of her her
+son's heart waiting on her, felt him bearing what part of the burden
+he could, even supporting her.  And when she was at the hospital,
+she thought:  "It WILL upset that lad when I tell him how bad it is. 
+I'd better be careful."  And when she was trudging home again,
+she felt he was coming to share her burden.
+
+"Is it bad?" asked Paul, as soon as she entered the house.
+
+"It's bad enough," she replied.
+
+"What?"
+
+She sighed and sat down, undoing her bonnet-strings. Her son
+watched her face as it was lifted, and her small, work-hardened hands
+fingering at the bow under her chin.
+
+"Well," she answered, "it's not really dangerous, but the nurse
+says it's a dreadful smash.  You see, a great piece of rock fell
+on his leg--here--and it's a compound fracture.  There are pieces
+of bone sticking through---"
+
+"Ugh--how horrid!" exclaimed the children.
+
+"And," she continued, "of course he says he's going to die--it
+wouldn't be him if he didn't. 'I'm done for, my lass!' he said,
+looking at me.  'Don't be so silly,' I said to him.  'You're not going
+to die of a broken leg, however badly it's smashed.'  'I s'll niver
+come out of 'ere but in a wooden box,' he groaned.  'Well,' I said,
+'if you want them to carry you into the garden in a wooden box,
+when you're better, I've no doubt they will.'  'If we think it's
+good for him,' said the Sister.  She's an awfully nice Sister,
+but rather strict."
+
+Mrs. Morel took off her bonnet.  The children waited in silence.
+
+"Of course, he IS bad," she continued, "and he will be. 
+It's a great shock, and he's lost a lot of blood; and, of course,
+it IS a very dangerous smash.  It's not at all sure that it will mend
+so easily.  And then there's the fever and the mortification--if it took
+bad ways he'd quickly be gone.  But there, he's a clean-blooded man,
+with wonderful healing flesh, and so I see no reason why it SHOULD
+take bad ways.  Of course there's a wound---"
+
+She was pale now with emotion and anxiety.  The three children
+realised that it was very bad for their father, and the house
+was silent, anxious.
+
+"But he always gets better," said Paul after a while.
+
+"That's what I tell him," said the mother.
+
+Everybody moved about in silence.
+
+"And he really looked nearly done for," she said.  "But the
+Sister says that is the pain."
+
+Annie took away her mother's coat and bonnet.
+
+"And he looked at me when I came away!  I said:  'I s'll
+have to go now, Walter, because of the train--and the children.' 
+And he looked at me.  It seems hard."
+
+Paul took up his brush again and went on painting.  Arthur went
+outside for some coal.  Annie sat looking dismal.  And Mrs. Morel,
+in her little rocking-chair that her husband had made for her
+when the first baby was coming, remained motionless, brooding. 
+She was grieved, and bitterly sorry for the man who was hurt so much. 
+But still, in her heart of hearts, where the love should have burned,
+there was a blank.  Now, when all her woman's pity was roused to its
+full extent, when she would have slaved herself to death to nurse
+him and to save him, when she would have taken the pain herself,
+if she could, somewhere far away inside her, she felt indifferent
+to him and to his suffering.  It hurt her most of all, this failure
+to love him, even when he roused her strong emotions.  She brooded
+a while.
+
+"And there," she said suddenly, "when I'd got halfway to Keston,
+I found I'd come out in my working boots--and LOOK at them." 
+They were an old pair of Paul's, brown and rubbed through at
+the toes.  "I didn't know what to do with myself, for shame,"
+she added.
+
+In the morning, when Annie and Arthur were at school, Mrs. Morel
+talked again to her son, who was helping her with her housework.
+
+"I found Barker at the hospital.  He did look bad,
+poor little fellow!  'Well,' I said to him, 'what sort of a
+journey did you have with him?'  'Dunna ax me, missis!' he said. 
+'Ay,' I said, 'I know what he'd be.'  'But it WOR bad for him,
+Mrs. Morel, it WOR that!' he said.  'I know,' I said.  'At ivry jolt
+I thought my 'eart would ha' flown clean out o' my mouth,' he said. 
+'An' the scream 'e gives sometimes!  Missis, not for a fortune would
+I go through wi' it again.'  'I can quite understand it,' I said. 
+'It's a nasty job, though,' he said, 'an' one as'll be a long
+while afore it's right again.'  'I'm afraid it will,' I said. 
+I like Mr. Barker--I DO like him.  There's something so manly
+about him."
+
+Paul resumed his task silently.
+
+"And of course," Mrs. Morel continued, "for a man like your father,
+the hospital IS hard.  He CAN'T understand rules and regulations. 
+And he won't let anybody else touch him, not if he can help it. 
+When he smashed the muscles of his thigh, and it had to be dressed
+four times a day, WOULD he let anybody but me or his mother do it? 
+He wouldn't. So, of course, he'll suffer in there with the nurses. 
+And I didn't like leaving him.  I'm sure, when I kissed him an' came away,
+it seemed a shame."
+
+So she talked to her son, almost as if she were thinking
+aloud to him, and he took it in as best he could, by sharing her
+trouble to lighten it.  And in the end she shared almost everything
+with him without knowing.
+
+Morel had a very bad time.  For a week he was in a
+critical condition.  Then he began to mend.  And then, knowing he
+was going to get better, the whole family sighed with relief,
+and proceeded to live happily.
+
+They were not badly off whilst Morel was in the hospital. 
+There were fourteen shillings a week from the pit, ten shillings
+from the sick club, and five shillings from the Disability Fund;
+and then every week the butties had something for Mrs. Morel--five
+or seven shillings--so that she was quite well to do.  And whilst
+Morel was progressing favourably in the hospital, the family was
+extraordinarily happy and peaceful.  On Saturdays and Wednesdays
+Mrs. Morel went to Nottingham to see her husband.  Then she always
+brought back some little thing:  a small tube of paints for Paul,
+or some thick paper; a couple of postcards for Annie, that the whole
+family rejoiced over for days before the girl was allowed to send
+them away; or a fret-saw for Arthur, or a bit of pretty wood. 
+She described her adventures into the big shops with joy. 
+Soon the folk in the picture-shop knew her, and knew about Paul. 
+The girl in the book-shop took a keen interest in her.  Mrs. Morel
+was full of information when she got home from Nottingham.  The three
+sat round till bed-time, listening, putting in, arguing.  Then Paul
+often raked the fire.
+
+"I'm the man in the house now," he used to say to his mother
+with joy.  They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. 
+And they almost regretted--though none of them would have owned to
+such callousness--that their father was soon coming back.
+
+Paul was now fourteen, and was looking for work.  He was a
+rather small and rather finely-made boy, with dark brown hair and
+light blue eyes.  His face had already lost its youthful chubbiness,
+and was becoming somewhat like William's--rough-featured, almost
+rugged--and it was extraordinarily mobile.  Usually he looked
+as if he saw things, was full of life, and warm; then his smile,
+like his mother's, came suddenly and was very lovable; and then,
+when there was any clog in his soul's quick running, his face went
+stupid and ugly.  He was the sort of boy that becomes a clown
+and a lout as soon as he is not understood, or feels himself
+held cheap; and, again, is adorable at the first touch of warmth.
+
+He suffered very much from the first contact with anything. 
+When he was seven, the starting school had been a nightmare and a
+torture to him.  But afterwards he liked it.  And now that he felt
+he had to go out into life, he went through agonies of shrinking
+self-consciousness. He was quite a clever painter for a boy of his years,
+and he knew some French and German and mathematics that Mr. Heaton
+had taught him.  But nothing he had was of any commercial value. 
+He was not strong enough for heavy manual work, his mother said. 
+He did not care for making things with his hands, preferred racing about,
+or making excursions into the country, or reading, or painting.
+
+"What do you want to be?" his mother asked.
+
+"Anything."
+
+"That is no answer," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+But it was quite truthfully the only answer he could give. 
+His ambition, as far as this world's gear went, was quietly to earn
+his thirty or thirty-five shillings a week somewhere near home,
+and then, when his father died, have a cottage with his mother,
+paint and go out as he liked, and live happy ever after.  That was his
+programme as far as doing things went.  But he was proud within himself,
+measuring people against himself, and placing them, inexorably.  And he
+thought that PERHAPS he might also make a painter, the real thing. 
+But that he left alone.
+
+"Then," said his mother, "you must look in the paper
+for the advertisements."
+
+He looked at her.  It seemed to him a bitter humiliation
+and an anguish to go through.  But he said nothing.  When he got up
+in the morning, his whole being was knotted up over this one thought:
+
+"I've got to go and look for advertisements for a job."
+
+It stood in front of the morning, that thought, killing all
+joy and even life, for him.  His heart felt like a tight knot.
+
+And then, at ten o'clock, he set off.  He was supposed to be
+a queer, quiet child.  Going up the sunny street of the little town,
+he felt as if all the folk he met said to themselves:  "He's going
+to the Co-op. reading-room to look in the papers for a place. 
+He can't get a job.  I suppose he's living on his mother."  Then he
+crept up the stone stairs behind the drapery shop at the Co-op.,
+and peeped in the reading-room. Usually one or two men were there,
+either old, useless fellows, or colliers "on the club". So he entered,
+full of shrinking and suffering when they looked up, seated himself at
+the table, and pretended to scan the news.  He knew they would think: 
+"What does a lad of thirteen want in a reading-room with a newspaper?"
+and he suffered.
+
+Then he looked wistfully out of the window.  Already he was
+a prisoner of industrialism.  Large sunflowers stared over the
+old red wall of the garden opposite, looking in their jolly way
+down on the women who were hurrying with something for dinner. 
+The valley was full of corn, brightening in the sun.  Two collieries,
+among the fields, waved their small white plumes of steam.  Far off
+on the hills were the woods of Annesley, dark and fascinating. 
+Already his heart went down.  He was being taken into bondage. 
+His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now.
+
+The brewers' waggons came rolling up from Keston with enormous
+barrels, four a side, like beans in a burst bean-pod. The waggoner,
+throned aloft, rolling massively in his seat, was not so much
+below Paul's eye.  The man's hair, on his small, bullet head,
+was bleached almost white by the sun, and on his thick red arms,
+rocking idly on his sack apron, the white hairs glistened. 
+His red face shone and was almost asleep with sunshine.  The horses,
+handsome and brown, went on by themselves, looking by far the masters
+of the show.
+
+Paul wished he were stupid.  "I wish," he thought to himself,
+"I was fat like him, and like a dog in the sun.  I wish I was a pig
+and a brewer's waggoner."
+
+Then, the room being at last empty, he would hastily copy
+an advertisement on a scrap of paper, then another, and slip
+out in immense relief.  His mother would scan over his copies.
+
+"Yes," she said, "you may try."
+
+William had written out a letter of application, couched in
+admirable business language, which Paul copied, with variations. 
+The boy's handwriting was execrable, so that William, who did all
+things well, got into a fever of impatience.
+
+The elder brother was becoming quite swanky.  In London he found
+that he could associate with men far above his Bestwood friends
+in station.  Some of the clerks in the office had studied for the law,
+and were more or less going through a kind of apprenticeship. 
+William always made friends among men wherever he went, he was so jolly. 
+Therefore he was soon visiting and staying in houses of men who,
+in Bestwood, would have looked down on the unapproachable bank manager,
+and would merely have called indifferently on the Rector.  So he began
+to fancy himself as a great gun.  He was, indeed, rather surprised
+at the ease with which he became a gentleman.
+
+His mother was glad, he seemed so pleased.  And his lodging
+in Walthamstow was so dreary.  But now there seemed to come a kind
+of fever into the young man's letters.  He was unsettled by all
+the change, he did not stand firm on his own feet, but seemed to spin
+rather giddily on the quick current of the new life.  His mother was
+anxious for him.  She could feel him losing himself.  He had danced
+and gone to the theatre, boated on the river, been out with friends;
+and she knew he sat up afterwards in his cold bedroom grinding away
+at Latin, because he intended to get on in his office, and in the
+law as much as he could.  He never sent his mother any money now. 
+It was all taken, the little he had, for his own life.  And she
+did not want any, except sometimes, when she was in a tight corner,
+and when ten shillings would have saved her much worry.  She still
+dreamed of William, and of what he would do, with herself behind him. 
+Never for a minute would she admit to herself how heavy and anxious
+her heart was because of him.
+
+Also he talked a good deal now of a girl he had met at a dance,
+a handsome brunette, quite young, and a lady, after whom the men
+were running thick and fast.
+
+"I wonder if you would run, my boy," his mother wrote
+to him, "unless you saw all the other men chasing her too. 
+You feel safe enough and vain enough in a crowd.  But take care,
+and see how you feel when you find yourself alone, and in triumph." 
+William resented these things, and continued the chase.  He had
+taken the girl on the river.  "If you saw her, mother, you would
+know how I feel.  Tall and elegant, with the clearest of clear,
+transparent olive complexions, hair as black as jet, and such
+grey eyes--bright, mocking, like lights on water at night. 
+It is all very well to be a bit satirical till you see her. 
+And she dresses as well as any woman in London.  I tell you,
+your son doesn't half put his head up when she goes walking down
+Piccadilly with him."
+
+Mrs. Morel wondered, in her heart, if her son did not go
+walking down Piccadilly with an elegant figure and fine clothes,
+rather than with a woman who was near to him.  But she congratulated
+him in her doubtful fashion.  And, as she stood over the washing-tub,
+the mother brooded over her son.  She saw him saddled with an
+elegant and expensive wife, earning little money, dragging along
+and getting draggled in some small, ugly house in a suburb. 
+"But there," she told herself, "I am very likely a silly--meeting
+trouble halfway."  Nevertheless, the load of anxiety scarcely ever
+left her heart, lest William should do the wrong thing by himself.
+
+Presently, Paul was bidden call upon Thomas Jordan,
+Manufacturer of Surgical Appliances, at 21, Spaniel Row, Nottingham. 
+Mrs. Morel was all joy.
+
+"There, you see!" she cried, her eyes shining.  "You've only
+written four letters, and the third is answered.  You're lucky,
+my boy, as I always said you were."
+
+Paul looked at the picture of a wooden leg, adorned with elastic
+stockings and other appliances, that figured on Mr. Jordan's notepaper,
+and he felt alarmed.  He had not known that elastic stockings existed. 
+And he seemed to feel the business world, with its regulated system
+of values, and its impersonality, and he dreaded it.  It seemed
+monstrous also that a business could be run on wooden legs.
+
+Mother and son set off together one Tuesday morning. 
+It was August and blazing hot.  Paul walked with something screwed up
+tight inside him.  He would have suffered much physical pain rather
+than this unreasonable suffering at being exposed to strangers,
+to be accepted or rejected.  Yet he chattered away with his mother. 
+He would never have confessed to her how he suffered over these things,
+and she only partly guessed.  She was gay, like a sweetheart. 
+She stood in front of the ticket-office at Bestwood, and Paul watched
+her take from her purse the money for the tickets.
+As he saw her hands in their old black kid gloves getting
+the silver out of the worn purse, his heart contracted with pain
+of love of her.
+
+She was quite excited, and quite gay.  He suffered because she
+WOULD talk aloud in presence of the other travellers.
+
+"Now look at that silly cow!" she said, "careering round
+as if it thought it was a circus."
+
+"It's most likely a bottfly," he said very low.
+
+"A what?" she asked brightly and unashamed.
+
+They thought a while.  He was sensible all the time of having
+her opposite him.  Suddenly their eyes met, and she smiled to
+him--a rare, intimate smile, beautiful with brightness and love. 
+Then each looked out of the window.
+
+The sixteen slow miles of railway journey passed.  The mother
+and son walked down Station Street, feeling the excitement of lovers
+having an adventure together.  In Carrington Street they stopped
+to hang over the parapet and look at the barges on the canal below.
+
+"It's just like Venice," he said, seeing the sunshine
+on the water that lay between high factory walls.
+
+"Perhaps," she answered, smiling.
+
+They enjoyed the shops immensely.
+
+"Now you see that blouse," she would say, "wouldn't that just
+suit our Annie?  And for one-and-eleven-three. Isn't that cheap?"
+
+"And made of needlework as well," he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+They had plenty of time, so they did not hurry.  The town
+was strange and delightful to them.  But the boy was tied up inside
+in a knot of apprehension.  He dreaded the interview with Thomas Jordan.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock by St. Peter's Church. 
+They turned up a narrow street that led to the Castle.  It was
+gloomy and old-fashioned, having low dark shops and dark green house
+doors with brass knockers, and yellow-ochred doorsteps projecting
+on to the pavement; then another old shop whose small window looked
+like a cunning, half-shut eye.  Mother and son went cautiously,
+looking everywhere for "Thomas Jordan and Son". It was like hunting
+in some wild place.  They were on tiptoe of excitement.
+
+Suddenly they spied a big, dark archway, in which were names
+of various firms, Thomas Jordan among them.
+
+"Here it is!" said Mrs. Morel.  "But now WHERE is it?"
+
+They looked round.  On one side was a queer, dark, cardboard factory,
+on the other a Commercial Hotel.
+
+"It's up the entry," said Paul.
+
+And they ventured under the archway, as into the jaws
+of the dragon.  They emerged into a wide yard, like a well,
+with buildings all round.  It was littered with straw and boxes,
+and cardboard.  The sunshine actually caught one crate whose straw
+was streaming on to the yard like gold.  But elsewhere the place
+was like a pit.  There were several doors, and two flights of steps. 
+Straight in front, on a dirty glass door at the top of a staircase,
+loomed the ominous words "Thomas Jordan and Son--Surgical Appliances." 
+Mrs. Morel went first, her son followed her.  Charles I mounted his
+scaffold with a lighter heart than had Paul Morel as he followed his
+mother up the dirty steps to the dirty door.
+
+She pushed open the door, and stood in pleased surprise.  In front
+of her was a big warehouse, with creamy paper parcels everywhere,
+and clerks, with their shirt-sleeves rolled back, were going about
+in an at-home sort of way.  The light was subdued, the glossy cream
+parcels seemed luminous, the counters were of dark brown wood. 
+All was quiet and very homely.  Mrs. Morel took two steps forward,
+then waited.  Paul stood behind her.  She had on her Sunday
+bonnet and a black veil; he wore a boy's broad white collar and a
+Norfolk suit.
+
+One of the clerks looked up.  He was thin and tall, with a
+small face.  His way of looking was alert.  Then he glanced round
+to the other end of the room, where was a glass office.  And then
+he came forward.  He did not say anything, but leaned in a gentle,
+inquiring fashion towards Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Can I see Mr. Jordan?" she asked.
+
+"I'll fetch him," answered the young man.
+
+He went down to the glass office.  A red-faced, white-whiskered
+old man looked up.  He reminded Paul of a pomeranian dog. 
+Then the same little man came up the room.  He had short legs,
+was rather stout, and wore an alpaca jacket.  So, with one ear up,
+as it were, he came stoutly and inquiringly down the room.
+
+"Good-morning!" he said, hesitating before Mrs. Morel,
+in doubt as to whether she were a customer or not.
+
+"Good-morning. I came with my son, Paul Morel.  You asked him
+to call this morning."
+
+"Come this way," said Mr. Jordan, in a rather snappy little
+manner intended to be businesslike.
+
+They followed the manufacturer into a grubby little room,
+upholstered in black American leather, glossy with the rubbing of
+many customers.  On the table was a pile of trusses, yellow wash-leather
+hoops tangled together.  They looked new and living.  Paul sniffed the
+odour of new wash-leather. He wondered what the things were.  By this
+time he was so much stunned that he only noticed the outside things.
+
+"Sit down!" said Mr. Jordan, irritably pointing Mrs. Morel
+to a horse-hair chair.  She sat on the edge in an uncertain fashion. 
+Then the little old man fidgeted and found a paper.
+
+"Did you write this letter?" he snapped, thrusting what Paul
+recognised as his own notepaper in front of him.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+At that moment he was occupied in two ways:  first, in feeling
+guilty for telling a lie, since William had composed the letter;
+second, in wondering why his letter seemed so strange and different,
+in the fat, red hand of the man, from what it had been when it lay
+on the kitchen table.  It was like part of himself, gone astray. 
+He resented the way the man held it.
+
+"Where did you learn to write?" said the old man crossly.
+
+Paul merely looked at him shamedly, and did not answer.
+
+"He IS a bad writer," put in Mrs. Morel apologetically. 
+Then she pushed up her veil.  Paul hated her for not being prouder
+with this common little man, and he loved her face clear of the veil.
+
+"And you say you know French?" inquired the little man,
+still sharply.
+
+"Yes," said Paul.
+
+"What school did you go to?"
+
+"The Board-school."
+
+"And did you learn it there?"
+
+"No--I---" The boy went crimson and got no farther.
+
+"His godfather gave him lessons," said Mrs. Morel, half pleading
+and rather distant.
+
+Mr. Jordan hesitated.  Then, in his irritable manner--he always
+seemed to keep his hands ready for action--he pulled another sheet of
+paper from his pocket, unfolded it.  The paper made a crackling noise. 
+He handed it to Paul.
+
+"Read that," he said.
+
+It was a note in French, in thin, flimsy foreign handwriting
+that the boy could not decipher.  He stared blankly at the paper.
+
+"'Monsieur,'" he began; then he looked in great confusion
+at Mr. Jordan.  "It's the--it's the---"
+
+He wanted to say "handwriting", but his wits would no longer work
+even sufficiently to supply him with the word.  Feeling an utter fool,
+and hating Mr. Jordan, he turned desperately to the paper again.
+
+"'Sir,--Please send me'--er--er--I can't tell the--er--'two
+pairs--gris fil bas--grey thread stockings'--er--er--'sans--without'--
+er--I can't tell the words--er--'doigts--fingers'--er--I can't tell the---"
+
+He wanted to say "handwriting", but the word still refused
+to come.  Seeing him stuck, Mr. Jordan snatched the paper from him.
+
+"'Please send by return two pairs grey thread stockings
+without TOES.'"
+
+"Well," flashed Paul, "'doigts' means 'fingers'--as well--as
+a rule---"
+
+The little man looked at him.  He did not know whether "doigts"
+meant "fingers"; he knew that for all HIS purposes it meant "toes".
+
+"Fingers to stockings!" he snapped.
+
+"Well, it DOES mean fingers," the boy persisted.
+
+He hated the little man, who made such a clod of him. 
+Mr. Jordan looked at the pale, stupid, defiant boy, then at the mother,
+who sat quiet and with that peculiar shut-off look of the poor
+who have to depend on the favour of others.
+
+"And when could he come?" he asked.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Morel, "as soon as you wish.  He has finished
+school now."
+
+"He would live in Bestwood?"
+
+"Yes; but he could be in--at the station--at quarter to eight."
+
+"H'm!"
+
+It ended by Paul's being engaged as junior spiral clerk at eight
+shillings a week.  The boy did not open his mouth to say another
+word, after having insisted that "doigts" meant "fingers". He
+followed his mother down the stairs.  She looked at him with her
+bright blue eyes full of love and joy.
+
+"I think you'll like it," she said.
+
+"'Doigts' does mean 'fingers', mother, and it was the writing. 
+I couldn't read the writing."
+
+"Never mind, my boy.  I'm sure he'll be all right, and you
+won't see much of him.  Wasn't that first young fellow nice? 
+I'm sure you'll like them."
+
+"But wasn't Mr. Jordan common, mother?  Does he own it all?"
+
+"I suppose he was a workman who has got on," she said. 
+"You mustn't mind people so much.  They're not being disagreeable
+to YOU--it's their way.  You always think people are meaning things
+for you.  But they don't."
+
+It was very sunny.  Over the big desolate space of the market-place
+the blue sky shimmered, and the granite cobbles of the paving glistened. 
+Shops down the Long Row were deep in obscurity, and the shadow was full
+of colour.  Just where the horse trams trundled across the market
+was a row of fruit stalls, with fruit blazing in the sun--apples
+and piles of reddish oranges, small green-gage plums and bananas. 
+There was a warm scent of fruit as mother and son passed. 
+Gradually his feeling of ignominy and of rage sank.
+
+"Where should we go for dinner?" asked the mother.
+
+It was felt to be a reckless extravagance.  Paul had only
+been in an eating-house once or twice in his life, and then only
+to have a cup of tea and a bun.  Most of the people of Bestwood
+considered that tea and bread-and-butter, and perhaps potted beef,
+was all they could afford to eat in Nottingham.  Real cooked dinner
+was considered great extravagance.  Paul felt rather guilty.
+
+They found a place that looked quite cheap.  But when Mrs. Morel
+scanned the bill of fare, her heart was heavy, things were so dear. 
+So she ordered kidney-pies and potatoes as the cheapest available dish.
+
+"We oughtn't to have come here, mother," said Paul.
+
+"Never mind," she said.  "We won't come again."
+
+She insisted on his having a small currant tart, because he
+liked sweets.
+
+"I don't want it, mother," he pleaded.
+
+"Yes," she insisted; "you'll have it."
+
+And she looked round for the waitress.  But the waitress
+was busy, and Mrs. Morel did not like to bother her then. 
+So the mother and son waited for the girl's pleasure, whilst she
+flirted among the men.
+
+"Brazen hussy!" said Mrs. Morel to Paul.  "Look now,
+she's taking that man HIS pudding, and he came long after us."
+
+"It doesn't matter, mother," said Paul.
+
+Mrs. Morel was angry.  But she was too poor, and her orders
+were too meagre, so that she had not the courage to insist on her
+rights just then.  They waited and waited.
+
+"Should we go, mother?" he said.
+
+Then Mrs. Morel stood up.  The girl was passing near.
+
+"Will you bring one currant tart?" said Mrs. Morel clearly.
+
+The girl looked round insolently.
+
+"Directly," she said.
+
+"We have waited quite long enough," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+In a moment the girl came back with the tart.  Mrs. Morel
+asked coldly for the bill.  Paul wanted to sink through the floor. 
+He marvelled at his mother's hardness.  He knew that only years
+of battling had taught her to insist even so little on her rights. 
+She shrank as much as he.
+
+"It's the last time I go THERE for anything!" she declared,
+when they were outside the place, thankful to be clear.
+
+"We'll go," she said, "and look at Keep's and Boot's, and one
+or two places, shall we?"
+
+They had discussions over the pictures, and Mrs. Morel
+wanted to buy him a little sable brush that be hankered after. 
+But this indulgence he refused.  He stood in front of milliners'
+shops and drapers' shops almost bored, but content for her to
+be interested.  They wandered on.
+
+"Now, just look at those black grapes!" she said.  "They make
+your mouth water.  I've wanted some of those for years, but I s'll
+have to wait a bit before I get them."
+
+Then she rejoiced in the florists, standing in the doorway sniffing.
+
+"Oh! oh!  Isn't it simply lovely!"
+
+Paul saw, in the darkness of the shop, an elegant young lady
+in black peering over the counter curiously.
+
+"They're looking at you," he said, trying to draw his mother away.
+
+"But what is it?" she exclaimed, refusing to be moved.
+
+"Stocks!" he answered, sniffing hastily.  "Look, there's
+a tubful."
+
+"So there is--red and white.  But really, I never knew
+stocks to smell like it!"  And, to his great relief, she moved
+out of the doorway, but only to stand in front of the window.
+
+"Paul!" she cried to him, who was trying to get out of
+sight of the elegant young lady in black--the shop-girl. "Paul! 
+Just look here!"
+
+He came reluctantly back.
+
+"Now, just look at that fuchsia!" she exclaimed, pointing.
+
+"H'm!" He made a curious, interested sound.  "You'd think
+every second as the flowers was going to fall off, they hang
+so big an' heavy."
+
+"And such an abundance!" she cried.
+
+"And the way they drop downwards with their threads and knots!"
+
+"Yes!" she exclaimed.  "Lovely!"
+
+"I wonder who'll buy it!" he said.
+
+"I wonder!" she answered.  "Not us."
+
+"It would die in our parlour."
+
+"Yes, beastly cold, sunless hole; it kills every bit of a plant
+you put in, and the kitchen chokes them to death."
+
+They bought a few things, and set off towards the station. 
+Looking up the canal, through the dark pass of the buildings,
+they saw the Castle on its bluff of brown, green-bushed rock,
+in a positive miracle of delicate sunshine.
+
+"Won't it be nice for me to come out at dinner-times?" said Paul. 
+"I can go all round here and see everything.  I s'll love it."
+
+"You will," assented his mother.
+
+He had spent a perfect afternoon with his mother.  They arrived
+home in the mellow evening, happy, and glowing, and tired.
+
+In the morning he filled in the form for his season-ticket
+and took it to the station.  When he got back, his mother was just
+beginning to wash the floor.  He sat crouched up on the sofa.
+
+"He says it'll be here on Saturday," he said.
+
+"And how much will it be?"
+
+"About one pound eleven," he said.
+
+She went on washing her floor in silence.
+
+"Is it a lot?" he asked.
+
+"It's no more than I thought," she answered.
+
+"An' I s'll earn eight shillings a week," he said.
+
+She did not answer, but went on with her work.  At last she said:
+
+"That William promised me, when he went to London, as he'd give
+me a pound a month.  He has given me ten shillings--twice; and now I
+know he hasn't a farthing if I asked him.  Not that I want it. 
+Only just now you'd think he might be able to help with this ticket,
+which I'd never expected."
+
+"He earns a lot," said Paul.
+
+"He earns a hundred and thirty pounds.  But they're all alike. 
+They're large in promises, but it's precious little fulfilment
+you get."
+
+"He spends over fifty shillings a week on himself," said Paul.
+
+"And I keep this house on less than thirty," she replied;
+"and am supposed to find money for extras.  But they don't care
+about helping you, once they've gone.  He'd rather spend it on
+that dressed-up creature."
+
+"She should have her own money if she's so grand," said Paul.
+
+"She should, but she hasn't. I asked him.  And I know he
+doesn't buy her a gold bangle for nothing.  I wonder whoever bought
+ME a gold bangle."
+
+William was succeeding with his "Gipsy", as he called her. 
+He asked the girl--her name was Louisa Lily Denys Western--for a
+photograph to send to his mother.  The photo came--a handsome brunette,
+taken in profile, smirking slightly--and, it might be, quite naked,
+for on the photograph not a scrap of clothing was to be seen,
+only a naked bust.
+
+"Yes," wrote Mrs. Morel to her son, "the photograph of
+Louie is very striking, and I can see she must be attractive. 
+But do you think, my boy, it was very good taste of a girl to
+give her young man that photo to send to his mother--the first? 
+Certainly the shoulders are beautiful, as you say.  But I hardly
+expected to see so much of them at the first view."
+
+Morel found the photograph standing on the chiffonier in
+the parlour.  He came out with it between his thick thumb and finger.
+
+"Who dost reckon this is?" he asked of his wife.
+
+"It's the girl our William is going with," replied Mrs. Morel.
+
+"H'm! 'Er's a bright spark, from th' look on 'er, an'
+one as wunna do him owermuch good neither.  Who is she?"
+
+"Her name is Louisa Lily Denys Western."
+
+"An' come again to-morrer!" exclaimed the miner.  "An' is 'er
+an actress?"
+
+"She is not.  She's supposed to be a lady."
+
+"I'll bet!" he exclaimed, still staring at the photo.  "A lady,
+is she?  An' how much does she reckon ter keep up this sort o'
+game on?"
+
+"On nothing.  She lives with an old aunt, whom she hates,
+and takes what bit of money's given her."
+
+"H'm!" said Morel, laying down the photograph.  "Then he's
+a fool to ha' ta'en up wi' such a one as that."
+
+"Dear Mater," William replied.  "I'm sorry you didn't like
+the photograph.  It never occurred to me when I sent it, that you
+mightn't think it decent.  However, I told Gyp that it didn't quite
+suit your prim and proper notions, so she's going to send you another,
+that I hope will please you better.  She's always being photographed;
+in fact, the photographers ask her if they may take her for nothing."
+
+Presently the new photograph came, with a little silly note
+from the girl.  This time the young lady was seen in a black satin
+evening bodice, cut square, with little puff sleeves, and black
+lace hanging down her beautiful arms.
+
+"I wonder if she ever wears anything except evening clothes,"
+said Mrs. Morel sarcastically.  "I'm sure I ought to be impressed."
+
+"You are disagreeable, mother," said Paul.  "I think the first
+one with bare shoulders is lovely."
+
+"Do you?" answered his mother.  "Well, I don't."
+
+On the Monday morning the boy got up at six to start work. 
+He had the season-ticket, which had cost such bitterness, in his
+waistcoat pocket.  He loved it with its bars of yellow across. 
+His mother packed his dinner in a small, shut-up basket, and he set
+off at a quarter to seven to catch the 7.15 train.  Mrs. Morel came
+to the entry-end to see him off.
+
+It was a perfect morning.  From the ash tree the slender
+green fruits that the children call "pigeons" were twinkling gaily
+down on a little breeze, into the front gardens of the houses. 
+The valley was full of a lustrous dark haze, through which the ripe
+corn shimmered, and in which the steam from Minton pit melted swiftly. 
+Puffs of wind came.  Paul looked over the high woods of Aldersley,
+where the country gleamed, and home had never pulled at him
+so powerfully.
+
+"Good-morning, mother," he said, smiling, but feeling very unhappy.
+
+"Good-morning," she replied cheerfully and tenderly.
+
+She stood in her white apron on the open road, watching him
+as he crossed the field.  He had a small, compact body that looked
+full of life.  She felt, as she saw him trudging over the field,
+that where he determined to go he would get.  She thought of William. 
+He would have leaped the fence instead of going round the stile. 
+He was away in London, doing well.  Paul would be working in Nottingham. 
+Now she had two sons in the world.  She could think of two places,
+great centres of industry, and feel that she had put a man into each
+of them, that these men would work out what SHE wanted; they were
+derived from her, they were of her, and their works also would be hers. 
+All the morning long she thought of Paul.
+
+At eight o'clock he climbed the dismal stairs of Jordan's
+Surgical Appliance Factory, and stood helplessly against the first
+great parcel-rack, waiting for somebody to pick him up.  The place
+was still not awake.  Over the counters were great dust sheets. 
+Two men only had arrived, and were heard talking in a corner,
+as they took off their coats and rolled up their shirt-sleeves. It
+was ten past eight.  Evidently there was no rush of punctuality. 
+Paul listened to the voices of the two clerks.  Then he heard
+someone cough, and saw in the office at the end of the room an old,
+decaying clerk, in a round smoking-cap of black velvet embroidered
+with red and green, opening letters.  He waited and waited. 
+One of the junior clerks went to the old man, greeted him
+cheerily and loudly.  Evidently the old "chief" was deaf. 
+Then the young fellow came striding importantly down to his counter. 
+He spied Paul.
+
+"Hello!" he said.  "You the new lad?"
+
+"Yes," said Paul.
+
+"H'm! What's your name?"
+
+"Paul Morel."
+
+"Paul Morel?  All right, you come on round here."
+
+Paul followed him round the rectangle of counters.  The room
+was second storey.  It had a great hole in the middle of the floor,
+fenced as with a wall of counters, and down this wide shaft
+the lifts went, and the light for the bottom storey.  Also there
+was a corresponding big, oblong hole in the ceiling, and one
+could see above, over the fence of the top floor, some machinery;
+and right away overhead was the glass roof, and all light for the
+three storeys came downwards, getting dimmer, so that it was always
+night on the ground floor and rather gloomy on the second floor. 
+The factory was the top floor, the warehouse the second, the storehouse
+the ground floor.  It was an insanitary, ancient place.
+
+Paul was led round to a very dark corner.
+
+"This is the 'Spiral' corner," said the clerk.  "You're Spiral,
+with Pappleworth.  He's your boss, but he's not come yet.  He doesn't
+get here till half-past eight.  So you can fetch the letters,
+if you like, from Mr. Melling down there."
+
+The young man pointed to the old clerk in the office.
+
+"All right," said Paul.
+
+"Here's a peg to hang your cap on.  Here are your entry ledgers. 
+Mr. Pappleworth won't be long."
+
+And the thin young man stalked away with long, busy strides
+over the hollow wooden floor.
+
+After a minute or two Paul went down and stood in the door
+of the glass office.  The old clerk in the smoking-cap looked
+down over the rim of his spectacles.
+
+"Good-morning," he said, kindly and impressively.  "You want
+the letters for the Spiral department, Thomas?"
+
+Paul resented being called "Thomas". But he took the letters
+and returned to his dark place, where the counter made an angle,
+where the great parcel-rack came to an end, and where there
+were three doors in the corner.  He sat on a high stool and read
+the letters--those whose handwriting was not too difficult. 
+They ran as follows:
+
+"Will you please send me at once a pair of lady's silk spiral
+thigh-hose, without feet, such as I had from you last year;
+length, thigh to knee, etc."  Or, "Major Chamberlain wishes
+to repeat his previous order for a silk non-elastic suspensory bandage."
+
+Many of these letters, some of them in French or Norwegian,
+were a great puzzle to the boy.  He sat on his stool nervously awaiting
+the arrival of his "boss". He suffered tortures of shyness when,
+at half-past eight, the factory girls for upstairs trooped past him.
+
+Mr. Pappleworth arrived, chewing a chlorodyne gum, at about
+twenty to nine, when all the other men were at work.  He was a thin,
+sallow man with a red nose, quick, staccato, and smartly but
+stiffly dressed.  He was about thirty-six years old.  There was
+something rather "doggy", rather smart, rather 'cute and shrewd,
+and something warm, and something slightly contemptible about him.
+
+"You my new lad?" he said.
+
+Paul stood up and said he was.
+
+"Fetched the letters?"
+
+Mr. Pappleworth gave a chew to his gum.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Copied 'em?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, come on then, let's look slippy.  Changed your coat?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You want to bring an old coat and leave it here."  He pronounced
+the last words with the chlorodyne gum between his side teeth. 
+He vanished into the darkness behind the great parcel-rack,
+reappeared coatless, turning up a smart striped shirt-cuff over
+a thin and hairy arm.  Then he slipped into his coat.  Paul noticed
+how thin he was, and that his trousers were in folds behind. 
+He seized a stool, dragged it beside the boy's, and sat down.
+
+"Sit down," he said.
+
+Paul took a seat.
+
+Mr. Pappleworth was very close to him.  The man seized
+the letters, snatched a long entry-book out of a rack in front
+of him, flung it open, seized a pen, and said:
+
+"Now look here.  You want to copy these letters in here." 
+He sniffed twice, gave a quick chew at his gum, stared fixedly at
+a letter, then went very still and absorbed, and wrote the entry rapidly,
+in a beautiful flourishing hand.  He glanced quickly at Paul.
+
+"See that?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Think you can do it all right?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"All right then, let's see you."
+
+He sprang off his stool.  Paul took a pen.  Mr. Pappleworth
+disappeared.  Paul rather liked copying the letters, but he wrote slowly,
+laboriously, and exceedingly badly.  He was doing the fourth letter,
+and feeling quite busy and happy, when Mr. Pappleworth reappeared.
+
+"Now then, how'r' yer getting on?  Done 'em?"
+
+He leaned over the boy's shoulder, chewing, and smelling
+of chlorodyne.
+
+"Strike my bob, lad, but you're a beautiful writer!"
+he exclaimed satirically.  "Ne'er mind, how many h'yer done? 
+Only three!  I'd 'a eaten 'em.  Get on, my lad, an' put numbers
+on 'em.  Here, look!  Get on!"
+
+Paul ground away at the letters, whilst Mr. Pappleworth fussed
+over various jobs.  Suddenly the boy started as a shrill whistle
+sounded near his ear.  Mr. Pappleworth came, took a plug out of a pipe,
+and said, in an amazingly cross and bossy voice:
+
+"Yes?"
+
+Paul heard a faint voice, like a woman's, out of the mouth of
+the tube.  He gazed in wonder, never having seen a speaking-tube before.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pappleworth disagreeably into the tube,
+"you'd better get some of your back work done, then."
+
+Again the woman's tiny voice was heard, sounding pretty and cross.
+
+"I've not time to stand here while you talk," said Mr. Pappleworth,
+and he pushed the plug into the tube.
+
+"Come, my lad," he said imploringly to Paul, "there's Polly
+crying out for them orders.  Can't you buck up a bit?  Here, come out!"
+
+He took the book, to Paul's immense chagrin, and began
+the copying himself.  He worked quickly and well.  This done,
+he seized some strips of long yellow paper, about three inches wide,
+and made out the day's orders for the work-girls.
+
+"You'd better watch me," he said to Paul, working all the
+while rapidly.  Paul watched the weird little drawings of legs,
+and thighs, and ankles, with the strokes across and the numbers,
+and the few brief directions which his chief made upon the yellow paper. 
+Then Mr. Pappleworth finished and jumped up.
+
+"Come on with me," he said, and the yellow papers flying
+in his hands, he dashed through a door and down some stairs,
+into the basement where the gas was burning.  They crossed the cold,
+damp storeroom, then a long, dreary room with a long table on trestles,
+into a smaller, cosy apartment, not very high, which had been
+built on to the main building.  In this room a small woman with
+a red serge blouse, and her black hair done on top of her head,
+was waiting like a proud little bantam.
+
+"Here y'are!" said Pappleworth.
+
+"I think it is 'here you are'!" exclaimed Polly.  "The girls
+have been here nearly half an hour waiting.  Just think of the
+time wasted!"
+
+"YOU think of getting your work done and not talking so much,"
+said Mr. Pappleworth.  "You could ha' been finishing off."
+
+"You know quite well we finished everything off on Saturday!"
+cried Pony, flying at him, her dark eyes flashing.
+
+"Tu-tu-tu-tu-terterter!" he mocked.  "Here's your new lad. 
+Don't ruin him as you did the last."
+
+"As we did the last!" repeated Polly.  "Yes, WE do a lot
+of ruining, we do.  My word, a lad would TAKE some ruining after
+he'd been with you."
+
+"It's time for work now, not for talk," said Mr. Pappleworth
+severely and coldly.
+
+"It was time for work some time back," said Polly, marching away
+with her head in the air.  She was an erect little body of forty.
+
+In that room were two round spiral machines on the bench under
+the window.  Through the inner doorway was another longer room,
+with six more machines.  A little group of girls, nicely dressed
+in white aprons, stood talking together.
+
+"Have you nothing else to do but talk?" said Mr. Pappleworth.
+
+"Only wait for you," said one handsome girl, laughing.
+
+"Well, get on, get on," he said.  "Come on, my lad. 
+You'll know your road down here again."
+
+And Paul ran upstairs after his chief.  He was given some
+checking and invoicing to do.  He stood at the desk, labouring in his
+execrable handwriting.  Presently Mr. Jordan came strutting down from
+the glass office and stood behind him, to the boy's great discomfort. 
+Suddenly a red and fat finger was thrust on the form he was filling in.
+
+"MR. J. A. Bates, Esquire!" exclaimed the cross voice just
+behind his ear.
+
+Paul looked at "Mr. J. A. Bates, Esquire" in his own vile writing,
+and wondered what was the matter now.
+
+"Didn't they teach you any better THAN that while they were at it? 
+If you put 'Mr.' you don't put Esquire'-a man can't be both at once."
+
+The boy regretted his too-much generosity in disposing
+of honours, hesitated, and with trembling fingers, scratched out
+the "Mr." Then all at once Mr. Jordan snatched away the invoice.
+
+"Make another!  Are you going to send that to a gentleman?" 
+And he tore up the blue form irritably.
+
+Paul, his ears red with shame, began again. 
+Still Mr. Jordan watched.
+
+"I don't know what they DO teach in schools.  You'll have
+to write better than that.  Lads learn nothing nowadays, but how
+to recite poetry and play the fiddle.  Have you seen his writing?"
+he asked of Mr. Pappleworth.
+
+"Yes; prime, isn't it?" replied Mr. Pappleworth indifferently.
+
+Mr. Jordan gave a little grunt, not unamiable.  Paul divined
+that his master's bark was worse than his bite.  Indeed, the little
+manufacturer, although he spoke bad English, was quite gentleman
+enough to leave his men alone and to take no notice of trifles. 
+But he knew he did not look like the boss and owner of the show,
+so he had to play his role of proprietor at first, to put things
+on a right footing.
+
+"Let's see, WHAT'S your name?" asked Mr. Pappleworth of the boy.
+
+"Paul Morel."
+
+It is curious that children suffer so much at having
+to pronounce their own names.
+
+"Paul Morel, is it?  All right, you Paul-Morel through them
+things there, and then---"
+
+Mr. Pappleworth subsided on to a stool, and began writing. 
+A girl came up from out of a door just behind, put some
+newly-pressed elastic web appliances on the counter, and returned. 
+Mr. Pappleworth picked up the whitey-blue knee-band, examined it,
+and its yellow order-paper quickly, and put it on one side. 
+Next was a flesh-pink "leg". He went through the few things,
+wrote out a couple of orders, and called to Paul to accompany him. 
+This time they went through the door whence the girl had emerged. 
+There Paul found himself at the top of a little wooden flight of steps,
+and below him saw a room with windows round two sides, and at the
+farther end half a dozen girls sitting bending over the benches in
+the light from the window, sewing.  They were singing together "Two
+Little Girls in Blue". Hearing the door opened, they all turned round,
+to see Mr. Pappleworth and Paul looking down on them from the far
+end of the room.  They stopped singing.
+
+"Can't you make a bit less row?" said Mr. Pappleworth. 
+"Folk'll think we keep cats."
+
+A hunchback woman on a high stool turned her long, rather heavy
+face towards Mr. Pappleworth, and said, in a contralto voice:
+
+"They're all tom-cats then."
+
+In vain Mr. Pappleworth tried to be impressive for Paul's benefit.
+He descended the steps into the finishing-off room,
+and went to the hunchback Fanny.  She had such
+a short body on her high stool that her head, with its
+great bands of bright brown hair, seemed over large, as did her pale,
+heavy face.  She wore a dress of green-black cashmere, and her wrists,
+coming out of the narrow cuffs, were thin and flat, as she put
+down her work nervously.  He showed her something that was wrong
+with a knee-cap.
+
+"Well," she said, "you needn't come blaming it on to me. 
+It's not my fault."  Her colour mounted to her cheek.
+
+"I never said it WAS your fault.  Will you do as I tell you?"
+replied Mr. Pappleworth shortly.
+
+"You don't say it's my fault, but you'd like to make out as it was,"
+the hunchback woman cried, almost in tears.  Then she snatched
+the knee-cap from her "boss", saying:  "Yes, I'll do it for you,
+but you needn't be snappy."
+
+"Here's your new lad," said Mr. Pappleworth.
+
+Fanny turned, smiling very gently on Paul.
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+"Yes; don't make a softy of him between you."
+
+"It's not us as 'ud make a softy of him," she said indignantly.
+
+"Come on then, Paul," said Mr. Pappleworth.
+
+"Au revoy, Paul," said one of the girls.
+
+There was a titter of laughter.  Paul went out, blushing deeply,
+not having spoken a word.
+
+The day was very long.  All morning the work-people were coming
+to speak to Mr. Pappleworth.  Paul was writing or learning to make
+up parcels, ready for the midday post.  At one o'clock, or, rather,
+at a quarter to one, Mr. Pappleworth disappeared to catch his train: 
+he lived in the suburbs.  At one o'clock, Paul, feeling very lost,
+took his dinner-basket down into the stockroom in the basement,
+that had the long table on trestles, and ate his meal hurriedly,
+alone in that cellar of gloom and desolation.  Then he went out of doors. 
+The brightness and the freedom of the streets made him feel adventurous
+and happy.  But at two o'clock he was back in the corner of the
+big room.  Soon the work-girls went trooping past, making remarks. 
+It was the commoner girls who worked upstairs at the heavy tasks
+of truss-making and the finishing of artificial limbs.  He waited
+for Mr. Pappleworth, not knowing what to do, sitting scribbling
+on the yellow order-paper.  Mr. Pappleworth came at twenty minutes
+to three.  Then he sat and gossiped with Paul, treating the boy
+entirely as an equal, even in age.
+
+In the afternoon there was never very much to do, unless it
+were near the week-end, and the accounts had to be made up. 
+At five o'clock all the men went down into the dungeon with the
+table on trestles, and there they had tea, eating bread-and-butter
+on the bare, dirty boards, talking with the same kind of ugly
+haste and slovenliness with which they ate their meal.  And yet
+upstairs the atmosphere among them was always jolly and clear. 
+The cellar and the trestles affected them.
+
+After tea, when all the gases were lighted, WORK went more briskly. 
+There was the big evening post to get off.  The hose came up warm
+and newly pressed from the workrooms.  Paul had made out the invoices. 
+Now he had the packing up and addressing to do, then he had
+to weigh his stock of parcels on the scales.  Everywhere voices
+were calling weights, there was the chink of metal, the rapid
+snapping of string, the hurrying to old Mr. Melling for stamps. 
+And at last the postman came with his sack, laughing and jolly. 
+Then everything slacked off, and Paul took his dinner-basket
+and ran to the station to catch the eight-twenty train.  The day
+in the factory was just twelve hours long.
+
+His mother sat waiting for him rather anxiously.  He had to
+walk from Keston, so was not home until about twenty past nine. 
+And he left the house before seven in the morning.  Mrs. Morel
+was rather anxious about his health.  But she herself had had to put up
+with so much that she expected her children to take the same odds. 
+They must go through with what came.  And Paul stayed at Jordan's,
+although all the time he was there his health suffered from the
+darkness and lack of air and the long hours.
+
+He came in pale and tired.  His mother looked at him. 
+She saw he was rather pleased, and her anxiety all went.
+
+"Well, and how was it?" she asked.
+
+"Ever so funny, mother," he replied.  "You don't have to work
+a bit hard, and they're nice with you."
+
+"And did you get on all right?"
+
+"Yes: they only say my writing's bad.  But Mr. Pappleworth--
+he's my man--said to Mr. Jordan I should be all right. 
+I'm Spiral, mother; you must come and see.  It's ever so nice."
+
+Soon he liked Jordan's. Mr. Pappleworth, who had a certain
+"saloon bar" flavour about him, was always natural, and treated
+him as if he had been a comrade.  Sometimes the "Spiral boss"
+was irritable, and chewed more lozenges than ever.  Even then,
+however, he was not offensive, but one of those people who hurt
+themselves by their own irritability more than they hurt other people.
+
+"Haven't you done that YET?" he would cry.  "Go on, be a month
+of Sundays."
+
+Again, and Paul could understand him least then, he was jocular
+and in high spirits.
+
+"I'm going to bring my little Yorkshire terrier bitch tomorrow,"
+he said jubilantly to Paul.
+
+"What's a Yorkshire terrier?"
+
+"DON'T know what a Yorkshire terrier is?  DON'T KNOW A YORKSHIRE---"
+Mr. Pappleworth was aghast.
+
+"Is it a little silky one--colours of iron and rusty silver?"
+
+"THAT'S it, my lad.  She's a gem.  She's had five pounds'
+worth of pups already, and she's worth over seven pounds herself;
+and she doesn't weigh twenty ounces."
+
+The next day the bitch came.  She was a shivering, miserable morsel. 
+Paul did not care for her; she seemed so like a wet rag that would
+never dry.  Then a man called for her, and began to make coarse jokes. 
+But Mr. Pappleworth nodded his head in the direction of the boy,
+and the talk went on sotto voce.
+
+Mr. Jordan only made one more excursion to watch Paul,
+and then the only fault he found was seeing the boy lay his pen
+on the counter.
+
+"Put your pen in your ear, if you're going to be a clerk. 
+Pen in your ear!"  And one day he said to the lad:  "Why don't you
+hold your shoulders straighter?  Come down here," when he took him
+into the glass office and fitted him with special braces for keeping
+the shoulders square.
+
+But Paul liked the girls best.  The men seemed common and
+rather dull.  He liked them all, but they were uninteresting.  Polly,
+the little brisk overseer downstairs, finding Paul eating in the cellar,
+asked him if she could cook him anything on her little stove. 
+Next day his mother gave him a dish that could be heated up. 
+He took it into the pleasant, clean room to Polly.  And very soon it
+grew to be an established custom that he should have dinner with her. 
+When he came in at eight in the morning he took his basket to her,
+and when he came down at one o'clock she had his dinner ready.
+
+He was not very tall, and pale, with thick chestnut hair,
+irregular features, and a wide, full mouth.  She was like a small bird. 
+He often called her a "robinet". Though naturally rather quiet,
+he would sit and chatter with her for hours telling her about his home. 
+The girls all liked to hear him talk.  They often gathered in a little
+circle while he sat on a bench, and held forth to them, laughing. 
+Some of them regarded him as a curious little creature, so serious,
+yet so bright and jolly, and always so delicate in his way with them. 
+They all liked him, and he adored them.  Polly he felt he belonged to. 
+Then Connie, with her mane of red hair, her face of apple-blossom,
+her murmuring voice, such a lady in her shabby black frock,
+appealed to his romantic side.
+
+"When you sit winding," he said, "it looks as if you were
+spinning at a spinning-wheel--it looks ever so nice.  You remind
+me of Elaine in the 'Idylls of the King'. I'd draw you if I could."
+
+And she glanced at him blushing shyly.  And later on he had
+a sketch he prized very much:  Connie sitting on the stool before
+the wheel, her flowing mane of red hair on her rusty black frock,
+her red mouth shut and serious, running the scarlet thread off
+the hank on to the reel.
+
+With Louie, handsome and brazen, who always seemed to thrust
+her hip at him, he usually joked.
+
+Emma was rather plain, rather old, and condescending. 
+But to condescend to him made her happy, and he did not mind.
+
+"How do you put needles in?" he asked.
+
+"Go away and don't bother."
+
+"But I ought to know how to put needles in."
+
+She ground at her machine all the while steadily.
+
+"There are many things you ought to know," she replied.
+
+"Tell me, then, how to stick needles in the machine."
+
+"Oh, the boy, what a nuisance he is!  Why, THIS is how you
+do it."
+
+He watched her attentively.  Suddenly a whistle piped. 
+Then Polly appeared, and said in a clear voice:
+
+"Mr. Pappleworth wants to know how much longer you're going
+to be down here playing with the girls, Paul."
+
+Paul flew upstairs, calling "Good-bye!" and Emma drew herself up.
+
+"It wasn't ME who wanted him to play with the machine,"
+she said.
+
+As a rule, when all the girls came back at two o'clock, he
+ran upstairs to Fanny, the hunchback, in the finishing-off room. 
+Mr. Pappleworth did not appear till twenty to three, and he often
+found his boy sitting beside Fanny, talking, or drawing, or singing
+with the girls.
+
+Often, after a minute's hesitation, Fanny would begin to sing. 
+She had a fine contralto voice.  Everybody joined in the chorus,
+and it went well.  Paul was not at all embarrassed, after a while,
+sitting in the room with the half a dozen work-girls.
+
+At the end of the song Fanny would say:
+
+"I know you've been laughing at me."
+
+"Don't be so soft, Fanny!" cried one of the girls.
+
+Once there was mention of Connie's red hair.
+
+"Fanny's is better, to my fancy," said Emma.
+
+"You needn't try to make a fool of me," said Fanny, flushing deeply.
+
+"No, but she has, Paul; she's got beautiful hair."
+
+"It's a treat of a colour," said he.  "That coldish colour
+like earth, and yet shiny.  It's like bog-water."
+
+"Goodness me!" exclaimed one girl, laughing.
+
+"How I do but get criticised," said Fanny.
+
+"But you should see it down, Paul," cried Emma earnestly. 
+"It's simply beautiful.  Put it down for him, Fanny, if he wants
+something to paint."
+
+Fanny would not, and yet she wanted to.
+
+"Then I'll take it down myself," said the lad.
+
+"Well, you can if you like," said Fanny.
+
+And he carefully took the pins out of the knot, and the rush
+of hair, of uniform dark brown, slid over the humped back.
+
+"What a lovely lot!" he exclaimed.
+
+The girls watched.  There was silence.  The youth shook
+the hair loose from the coil.
+
+"It's splendid!" he said, smelling its perfume.  "I'll bet
+it's worth pounds."
+
+"I'll leave it you when I die, Paul," said Fanny, half joking.
+
+"You look just like anybody else, sitting drying their hair,"
+said one of the girls to the long-legged hunchback.
+
+Poor Fanny was morbidly sensitive, always imagining insults. 
+Polly was curt and businesslike.  The two departments were for ever
+at war, and Paul was always finding Fanny in tears.  Then he was
+made the recipient of all her woes, and he had to plead her case
+with Polly.
+
+So the time went along happily enough.  The factory had a
+homely feel.  No one was rushed or driven.  Paul always enjoyed
+it when the work got faster, towards post-time, and all the men
+united in labour.  He liked to watch his fellow-clerks at work. 
+The man was the work and the work was the man, one thing, for the
+time being.  It was different with the girls.  The real woman
+never seemed to be there at the task, but as if left out, waiting.
+
+From the train going home at night he used to watch the lights
+of the town, sprinkled thick on the hills, fusing together in a blaze
+in the valleys.  He felt rich in life and happy.  Drawing farther off,
+there was a patch of lights at Bulwell like myriad petals shaken
+to the ground from the shed stars; and beyond was the red glare
+of the furnaces, playing like hot breath on the clouds.
+
+He had to walk two and more miles from Keston home,
+up two long hills, down two short hills.  He was often tired,
+and he counted the lamps climbing the hill above him, how many more
+to pass.  And from the hilltop, on pitch-dark nights, he looked
+round on the villages five or six miles away, that shone like swarms
+of glittering living things, almost a heaven against his feet. 
+Marlpool and Heanor scattered the far-off darkness with brilliance. 
+And occasionally the black valley space between was traced,
+violated by a great train rushing south to London or north to Scotland. 
+The trains roared by like projectiles level on the darkness,
+fuming and burning, making the valley clang with their passage. 
+They were gone, and the lights of the towns and villages glittered
+in silence.
+
+And then he came to the corner at home, which faced the
+other side of the night.  The ash-tree seemed a friend now. 
+His mother rose with gladness as he entered.  He put his eight
+shillings proudly on the table.
+
+"It'll help, mother?" he asked wistfully.
+
+"There's precious little left," she answered, "after your
+ticket and dinners and such are taken off."
+
+Then he told her the budget of the day.  His life-story,
+like an Arabian Nights, was told night after night to his mother. 
+It was almost as if it were her own life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+DEATH IN THE FAMILY
+
+ARTHUR MOREL was growing up.  He was a quick, careless, impulsive boy,
+a good deal like his father.  He hated study, made a great moan if he
+had to work, and escaped as soon as possible to his sport again.
+
+In appearance he remained the flower of the family,
+being well made, graceful, and full of life.  His dark brown hair
+and fresh colouring, and his exquisite dark blue eyes shaded with
+long lashes, together with his generous manner and fiery temper,
+made him a favourite.  But as he grew older his temper became uncertain. 
+He flew into rages over nothing, seemed unbearably raw and irritable.
+
+His mother, whom he loved, wearied of him sometimes. 
+He thought only of himself.  When he wanted amusement, all that
+stood in his way he hated, even if it were she. 
+When he was in trouble he moaned to her ceaselessly.
+
+"Goodness, boy!" she said, when he groaned about a master who,
+he said, hated him, "if you don't like it, alter it, and if you
+can't alter it, put up with it."
+
+And his father, whom he had loved and who had worshipped him,
+he came to detest.  As he grew older Morel fell into a slow ruin. 
+His body, which had been beautiful in movement and in being,
+shrank, did not seem to ripen with the years, but to get mean
+and rather despicable.  There came over him a look of meanness
+and of paltriness.  And when the mean-looking elderly man bullied or
+ordered the boy about, Arthur was furious.  Moreover, Morel's manners
+got worse and worse, his habits somewhat disgusting.  When the
+children were growing up and in the crucial stage of adolescence,
+the father was like some ugly irritant to their souls.  His manners
+in the house were the same as he used among the colliers down pit.
+
+"Dirty nuisance!"  Arthur would cry, jumping up and going
+straight out of the house when his father disgusted him. 
+And Morel persisted the more because his children hated it. 
+He seemed to take a kind of satisfaction in disgusting them,
+and driving them nearly mad, while they were so irritably sensitive
+at the age of fourteen or fifteen.  So that Arthur, who was growing
+up when his father was degenerate and elderly, hated him worst
+of all.
+
+Then, sometimes, the father would seem to feel the contemptuous
+hatred of his children.
+
+"There's not a man tries harder for his family!" he would shout. 
+"He does his best for them, and then gets treated like a dog. 
+But I'm not going to stand it, I tell you!"
+
+But for the threat and the fact that he did not try so hard
+as be imagined, they would have felt sorry.  As it was, the battle
+now went on nearly all between father and children, he persisting
+in his dirty and disgusting ways, just to assert his independence. 
+They loathed him.
+
+Arthur was so inflamed and irritable at last, that when he
+won a scholarship for the Grammar School in Nottingham, his mother
+decided to let him live in town, with one of her sisters, and only
+come home at week-ends.
+
+Annie was still a junior teacher in the Board-school, earning
+about four shillings a week.  But soon she would have fifteen shillings,
+since she had passed her examination, and there would be financial
+peace in the house.
+
+Mrs. Morel clung now to Paul.  He was quiet and not brilliant. 
+But still he stuck to his painting, and still he stuck to his mother. 
+Everything he did was for her.  She waited for his coming home
+in the evening, and then she unburdened herself of all she
+had pondered, or of all that had occurred to her during the day. 
+He sat and listened with his earnestness.  The two shared lives.
+
+William was engaged now to his brunette, and had bought her
+an engagement ring that cost eight guineas.  The children gasped
+at such a fabulous price.
+
+"Eight guineas!" said Morel.  "More fool him!  If he'd gen me
+some on't, it 'ud ha' looked better on 'im."
+
+"Given YOU some of it!" cried Mrs. Morel.  "Why give YOU
+some of it!"
+
+She remembered HE had bought no engagement ring at all,
+and she preferred William, who was not mean, if he were foolish. 
+But now the young man talked only of the dances to which he went
+with his betrothed, and the different resplendent clothes she wore;
+or he told his mother with glee how they went to the theatre like
+great swells.
+
+He wanted to bring the girl home.  Mrs. Morel said she
+should come at the Christmas.  This time William arrived with
+a lady, but with no presents.  Mrs. Morel had prepared supper. 
+Hearing footsteps, she rose and went to the door.  William entered.
+
+"Hello, mother!"  He kissed her hastily, then stood aside
+to present a tall, handsome girl, who was wearing a costume of fine
+black-and-white check, and furs.
+
+"Here's Gyp!"
+
+Miss Western held out her hand and showed her teeth in a small smile.
+
+"Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Morel!" she exclaimed.
+
+"I am afraid you will be hungry," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Oh no, we had dinner in the train.  Have you got my gloves, Chubby?"
+
+William Morel, big and raw-boned, looked at her quickly.
+
+"How should I?" he said.
+
+"Then I've lost them.  Don't be cross with me."
+
+A frown went over his face, but he said nothing.  She glanced
+round the kitchen.  It was small and curious to her, with its
+glittering kissing-bunch, its evergreens behind the pictures,
+its wooden chairs and little deal table.  At that moment Morel
+came in.
+
+"Hello, dad!"
+
+"Hello, my son!  Tha's let on me!"
+
+The two shook hands, and William presented the lady. 
+She gave the same smile that showed her teeth.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Morel?"
+
+Morel bowed obsequiously.
+
+"I'm very well, and I hope so are you.  You must make yourself
+very welcome."
+
+"Oh, thank you," she replied, rather amused.
+
+"You will like to go upstairs," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"If you don't mind; but not if it is any trouble to you."
+
+"It is no trouble.  Annie will take you.  Walter, carry up
+this box."
+
+"And don't be an hour dressing yourself up," said William
+to his betrothed.
+
+Annie took a brass candlestick, and, too shy almost to speak,
+preceded the young lady to the front bedroom, which Mr. and Mrs. Morel
+had vacated for her.  It, too, was small and cold by candlelight. 
+The colliers' wives only lit fires in bedrooms in case of extreme illness.
+
+"Shall I unstrap the box?" asked Annie.
+
+"Oh, thank you very much!"
+
+Annie played the part of maid, then went downstairs for hot water.
+
+"I think she's rather tired, mother," said William. 
+"It's a beastly journey, and we had such a rush."
+
+"Is there anything I can give her?" asked Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Oh no, she'll be all right."
+
+But there was a chill in the atmosphere.  After half an hour
+Miss Western came down, having put on a purplish-coloured dress,
+very fine for the collier's kitchen.
+
+"I told you you'd no need to change," said William to her.
+
+"Oh, Chubby!"  Then she turned with that sweetish smile
+to Mrs. Morel.  "Don't you think he's always grumbling, Mrs. Morel?"
+
+"Is he?" said Mrs. Morel.  "That's not very nice of him."
+
+"It isn't, really!"
+
+"You are cold," said the mother.  "Won't you come near the fire?"
+
+Morel jumped out of his armchair.
+
+"Come and sit you here!" he cried.  "Come and sit you here!"
+
+"No, dad, keep your own chair.  Sit on the sofa, Gyp," said William.
+
+"No, no!" cried Morel.  "This cheer's warmest.  Come and sit here,
+Miss Wesson."
+
+"Thank you so much," said the girl, seating herself
+in the collier's armchair, the place of honour.  She shivered,
+feeling the warmth of the kitchen penetrate her.
+
+"Fetch me a hanky, Chubby dear!" she said, putting up her mouth
+to him, and using the same intimate tone as if they were alone;
+which made the rest of the family feel as if they ought not to
+be present.  The young lady evidently did not realise them as people: 
+they were creatures to her for the present.  William winced.
+
+In such a household, in Streatham, Miss Western would have been
+a lady condescending to her inferiors.  These people were to her,
+certainly clownish--in short, the working classes.  How was she
+to adjust herself?
+
+"I'll go," said Annie.
+
+Miss Western took no notice, as if a servant had spoken. 
+But when the girl came downstairs again with the handkerchief,
+she said:  "Oh, thank you!" in a gracious way.
+
+She sat and talked about the dinner on the train, which had been
+so poor; about London, about dances.  She was really very nervous,
+and chattered from fear.  Morel sat all the time smoking his thick
+twist tobacco, watching her, and listening to her glib London speech,
+as he puffed.  Mrs. Morel, dressed up in her best black silk blouse,
+answered quietly and rather briefly.  The three children sat
+round in silence and admiration.  Miss Western was the princess. 
+Everything of the best was got out for her:  the best cups,
+the best spoons, the best table cloth, the best coffee-jug. The
+children thought she must find it quite grand.  She felt strange,
+not able to realise the people, not knowing how to treat them. 
+William joked, and was slightly uncomfortable.
+
+At about ten o'clock he said to her:
+
+"Aren't you tired, Gyp?"
+
+"Rather, Chubby," she answered, at once in the intimate tones
+and putting her head slightly on one side.
+
+"I'll light her the candle, mother," he said.
+
+"Very well," replied the mother.
+
+Miss Western stood up, held out her hand to Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Good-night, Mrs. Morel," she said.
+
+Paul sat at the boiler, letting the water run from the tap
+into a stone beer-bottle. Annie swathed the bottle in an old flannel
+pit-singlet, and kissed her mother good-night. She was to share
+the room with the lady, because the house was full.
+
+"You wait a minute," said Mrs. Morel to Annie.  And Annie sat
+nursing the hot-water bottle.  Miss Western shook hands all round,
+to everybody's discomfort, and took her departure, preceded by William. 
+In five minutes he was downstairs again.  His heart was rather sore;
+he did not know why.  He talked very little till everybody had gone
+to bed, but himself and his mother.  Then he stood with his legs apart,
+in his old attitude on the hearthrug, and said hesitatingly:
+
+"Well, mother?"
+
+"Well, my son?"
+
+She sat in the rocking-chair, feeling somehow hurt and humiliated,
+for his sake.
+
+"Do you like her?"
+
+"Yes," came the slow answer.
+
+"She's shy yet, mother.  She's not used to it.  It's different
+from her aunt's house, you know."
+
+"Of course it is, my boy; and she must find it difficult."
+
+"She does."  Then he frowned swiftly.  "If only she wouldn't
+put on her BLESSED airs!"
+
+"It's only her first awkwardness, my boy.  She'll be all right."
+
+"That's it, mother," he replied gratefully.  But his brow
+was gloomy.  "You know, she's not like you, mother.  She's not serious,
+and she can't think."
+
+"She's young, my boy."
+
+"Yes; and she's had no sort of show.  Her mother died when she was
+a child.  Since then she's lived with her aunt, whom she can't bear. 
+And her father was a rake.  She's had no love."
+
+"No! Well, you must make up to her."
+
+"And so--you have to forgive her a lot of things."
+
+"WHAT do you have to forgive her, my boy?"
+
+"I dunno.  When she seems shallow, you have to remember she's
+never had anybody to bring her deeper side out.  And she's FEARFULLY
+fond of me."
+
+"Anybody can see that."
+
+"But you know, mother--she's--she's different from us. 
+Those sort of people, like those she lives amongst, they don't seem
+to have the same principles."
+
+"You mustn't judge too hastily," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+But he seemed uneasy within himself.
+
+In the morning, however, he was up singing and larking round
+the house.
+
+"Hello!" he called, sitting on the stairs.  "Are you getting up?"
+
+"Yes," her voice called faintly.
+
+"Merry Christmas!" he shouted to her.
+
+Her laugh, pretty and tinkling, was heard in the bedroom. 
+She did not come down in half an hour.
+
+"Was she REALLY getting up when she said she was?" he asked
+of Annie.
+
+"Yes, she was," replied Annie.
+
+He waited a while, then went to the stairs again.
+
+"Happy New Year," he called.
+
+"Thank you, Chubby dear!" came the laughing voice, far away.
+
+"Buck up!" he implored.
+
+It was nearly an hour, and still he was waiting for her. 
+Morel, who always rose before six, looked at the clock.
+
+"Well, it's a winder!" he exclaimed.
+
+The family had breakfasted, all but William.  He went
+to the foot of the stairs.
+
+"Shall I have to send you an Easter egg up there?" he called,
+rather crossly.  She only laughed.  The family expected, after that
+time of preparation, something like magic.  At last she came,
+looking very nice in a blouse and skirt.
+
+"Have you REALLY been all this time getting ready?" he asked.
+
+"Chubby dear!  That question is not permitted, is it,
+Mrs. Morel?"
+
+She played the grand lady at first.  When she went with William
+to chapel, he in his frock-coat and silk hat, she in her furs
+and London-made costume, Paul and Arthur and Annie expected
+everybody to bow to the ground in admiration. 
+And Morel, standing in his Sunday suit at the end of the road,
+watching the gallant pair go, felt he was the father of princes
+and princesses.
+
+And yet she was not so grand.  For a year now she had been
+a sort of secretary or clerk in a London office.  But while she
+was with the Morels she queened it.  She sat and let Annie or Paul
+wait on her as if they were her servants.  She treated Mrs. Morel
+with a certain glibness and Morel with patronage.  But after a day
+or so she began to change her tune.
+
+William always wanted Paul or Annie to go along with them
+on their walks.  It was so much more interesting.  And Paul really
+DID admire "Gipsy" wholeheartedly; in fact, his mother scarcely
+forgave the boy for the adulation with which he treated the girl.
+
+On the second day, when Lily said:  "Oh, Annie, do you know
+where I left my muff?"  William replied:
+
+"You know it is in your bedroom.  Why do you ask Annie?"
+
+And Lily went upstairs with a cross, shut mouth.  But it
+angered the young man that she made a servant of his sister.
+
+On the third evening William and Lily were sitting together
+in the parlour by the fire in the dark.  At a quarter to eleven
+Mrs. Morel was heard raking the fire.  William came out to the kitchen,
+followed by his beloved.
+
+"Is it as late as that, mother?" he said.  She had been
+sitting alone.
+
+"It is not LATE, my boy, but it is as late as I usually sit up."
+
+"Won't you go to bed, then?" he asked.
+
+"And leave you two?  No, my boy, I don't believe in it."
+
+"Can't you trust us, mother?"
+
+"Whether I can or not, I won't do it.  You can stay till eleven
+if you like, and I can read."
+
+"Go to bed, Gyp," he said to his girl.  "We won't keep
+mater waiting."
+
+"Annie has left the candle burning, Lily," said Mrs. Morel;
+"I think you will see."
+
+"Yes, thank you.  Good-night, Mrs. Morel."
+
+William kissed his sweetheart at the foot of the stairs,
+and she went.  He returned to the kitchen.
+
+"Can't you trust us, mother?" he repeated, rather offended.
+
+"My boy, I tell you I don't BELIEVE in leaving two young
+things like you alone downstairs when everyone else is in bed."
+
+And he was forced to take this answer.  He kissed his mother
+good-night.
+
+At Easter he came over alone.  And then he discussed his
+sweetheart endlessly with his mother.
+
+"You know, mother, when I'm away from her I don't care for her
+a bit.  I shouldn't care if I never saw her again.  But, then,
+when I'm with her in the evenings I am awfully fond of her."
+
+"It's a queer sort of love to marry on," said Mrs. Morel,
+"if she holds you no more than that!"
+
+"It IS funny!" he exclaimed.  It worried and perplexed him. 
+"But yet--there's so much between us now I couldn't give her up."
+
+"You know best," said Mrs. Morel.  "But if it is as you say, I
+wouldn't call it LOVE--at any rate, it doesn't look much like it."
+
+"Oh, I don't know, mother.  She's an orphan, and---"
+
+They never came to any sort of conclusion.  He seemed puzzled
+and rather fretted.  She was rather reserved.  All his strength
+and money went in keeping this girl.  He could scarcely afford
+to take his mother to Nottingham when he came over.
+
+Paul's wages had been raised at Christmas to ten shillings,
+to his great joy.  He was quite happy at Jordan's, but his health
+suffered from the long hours and the confinement.  His mother,
+to whom he became more and more significant, thought how to help.
+
+His half-day holiday was on Monday afternoon.  On a Monday
+morning in May, as the two sat alone at breakfast, she said:
+
+"I think it will be a fine day."
+
+He looked up in surprise.  This meant something.
+
+"You know Mr. Leivers has gone to live on a new farm. 
+Well, he asked me last week if I wouldn't go and see Mrs. Leivers,
+and I promised to bring you on Monday if it's fine.  Shall we go?"
+
+"I say, little woman, how lovely!" he cried.  "And we'll go
+this afternoon?"
+
+Paul hurried off to the station jubilant.  Down Derby Road
+was a cherry-tree that glistened.  The old brick wall by the
+Statutes ground burned scarlet, spring was a very flame of green. 
+And the steep swoop of highroad lay, in its cool morning dust,
+splendid with patterns of sunshine and shadow, perfectly still. 
+The trees sloped their great green shoulders proudly; and inside
+the warehouse all the morning, the boy had
+a vision of spring outside.
+
+When he came home at dinner-time his mother was rather excited.
+
+"Are we going?" he asked.
+
+"When I'm ready," she replied.
+
+Presently he got up.
+
+"Go and get dressed while I wash up," he said.
+
+She did so.  He washed the pots, straightened, and then took
+her boots.  They were quite clean.  Mrs. Morel was one of those naturally
+exquisite people who can walk in mud without dirtying their shoes. 
+But Paul had to clean them for her.  They were kid boots at eight
+shillings a pair.  He, however, thought them the most dainty boots
+in the world, and he cleaned them with as much reverence as if they
+had been flowers.
+
+Suddenly she appeared in the inner doorway rather shyly. 
+She had got a new cotton blouse on.  Paul jumped up and went forward.
+
+"Oh, my stars!" he exclaimed.  "What a bobby-dazzler!"
+
+She sniffed in a little haughty way, and put her head up.
+
+"It's not a bobby-dazzler at all!" she replied.  "It's very quiet."
+
+She walked forward, whilst he hovered round her.
+
+"Well," she asked, quite shy, but pretending to be high
+and mighty, "do you like it?"
+
+"Awfully! You ARE a fine little woman to go jaunting out with!"
+
+He went and surveyed her from the back.
+
+"Well," he said, "if I was walking down the street behind you,
+I should say:  'Doesn't THAT little person fancy herself!"'
+
+"Well, she doesn't," replied Mrs. Morel.  "She's not sure it
+suits her."
+
+"Oh no! she wants to be in dirty black, looking as if she was
+wrapped in burnt paper.  It DOES suit you, and I say you look nice."
+
+She sniffed in her little way, pleased, but pretending
+to know better.
+
+"Well," she said, "it's cost me just three shillings. 
+You couldn't have got it ready-made for that price, could you?"
+
+"I should think you couldn't," he replied.
+
+"And, you know, it's good stuff."
+
+"Awfully pretty," he said.
+
+The blouse was white, with a little sprig of heliotrope and black.
+
+"Too young for me, though, I'm afraid," she said.
+
+"Too young for you!" he exclaimed in disgust.  "Why don't you
+buy some false white hair and stick it on your head."
+
+"I s'll soon have no need," she replied.  "I'm going white
+fast enough."
+
+"Well, you've no business to," he said.  "What do I want
+with a white-haired mother?"
+
+"I'm afraid you'll have to put up with one, my lad," she said
+rather strangely.
+
+They set off in great style, she carrying the umbrella William
+had given her, because of the sun.  Paul was considerably taller
+than she, though he was not big.  He fancied himself.
+
+On the fallow land the young wheat shone silkily.  Minton pit
+waved its plumes of white steam, coughed, and rattled hoarsely.
+
+"Now look at that!" said Mrs. Morel.  Mother and son stood on
+the road to watch.  Along the ridge of the great pit-hill crawled
+a little group in silhouette against the sky, a horse, a small truck,
+and a man.  They climbed the incline against the heavens. 
+At the end the man tipped the wagon.  There was an undue rattle
+as the waste fell down the sheer slope of the enormous bank.
+
+"You sit a minute, mother," he said, and she took a seat on
+a bank, whilst he sketched rapidly.  She was silent whilst he worked,
+looking round at the afternoon, the red cottages shining among
+their greenness.
+
+"The world is a wonderful place," she said, "and wonderfully
+beautiful."
+
+"And so's the pit," he said.  "Look how it heaps together,
+like something alive almost--a big creature that you don't know."
+
+"Yes," she said.  "Perhaps!"
+
+"And all the trucks standing waiting, like a string of beasts
+to be fed," he said.
+
+"And very thankful I am they ARE standing," she said,
+"for that means they'll turn middling time this week."
+
+"But I like the feel of MEN on things, while they're alive. 
+There's a feel of men about trucks, because they've been handled
+with men's hands, all of them."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+They went along under the trees of the highroad.  He was
+constantly informing her, but she was interested.  They passed
+the end of Nethermere, that was tossing its sunshine like petals lightly
+in its lap.  Then they turned on a private road, and in some
+trepidation approached a big farm.  A dog barked furiously. 
+A woman came out to see.
+
+"Is this the way to Willey Farm?"  Mrs. Morel asked.
+
+Paul hung behind in terror of being sent back.  But the woman
+was amiable, and directed them.  The mother and son went through
+the wheat and oats, over a little bridge into a wild meadow. 
+Peewits, with their white breasts glistening, wheeled and screamed
+about them.  The lake was still and blue.  High overhead
+a heron floated.  Opposite, the wood heaped on the hill, green and still.
+
+"It's a wild road, mother," said Paul.  "Just like Canada."
+
+"Isn't it beautiful!" said Mrs. Morel, looking round.
+
+"See that heron--see--see her legs?"
+
+He directed his mother, what she must see and what not. 
+And she was quite content.
+
+"But now," she said, "which way?  He told me through the wood."
+
+The wood, fenced and dark, lay on their left.
+
+"I can feel a bit of a path this road," said Paul.  "You've got
+town feet, somehow or other, you have."
+
+They found a little gate, and soon were in a broad green
+alley of the wood, with a new thicket of fir and pine on one hand,
+an old oak glade dipping down on the other.  And among the oaks
+the bluebells stood in pools of azure, under the new green hazels,
+upon a pale fawn floor of oak-leaves. He found flowers for her.
+
+"Here's a bit of new-mown hay," he said; then, again, he brought
+her forget-me-nots. And, again, his heart hurt with love, seeing her hand,
+used with work, holding the little bunch of flowers he gave her. 
+She was perfectly happy.
+
+But at the end of the riding was a fence to climb.  Paul was
+over in a second.
+
+"Come," he said, "let me help you."
+
+"No, go away.  I will do it in my own way."
+
+He stood below with his hands up ready to help her. 
+She climbed cautiously.
+
+"What a way to climb!" he exclaimed scornfully, when she
+was safely to earth again.
+
+"Hateful stiles!" she cried.
+
+"Duffer of a little woman," he replied, "who can't get over 'em."
+
+In front, along the edge of the wood, was a cluster of low red
+farm buildings.  The two hastened forward.  Flush with the wood
+was the apple orchard, where blossom was falling on the grindstone. 
+The pond was deep under a hedge and overhanging oak trees. 
+Some cows stood in the shade.  The farm and buildings, three sides
+of a quadrangle, embraced the sunshine towards the wood.  It was
+very still.
+
+Mother and son went into the small railed garden, where was
+a scent of red gillivers.  By the open door were some floury loaves,
+put out to cool.  A hen was just coming to peck them.  Then, in the
+doorway suddenly appeared a girl in a dirty apron.  She was about
+fourteen years old, had a rosy dark face, a bunch of short black curls,
+very fine and free, and dark eyes; shy, questioning, a little
+resentful of the strangers, she disappeared.  In a minute another
+figure appeared, a small, frail woman, rosy, with great dark brown eyes.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, smiling with a little glow, "you've come,
+then.  I AM glad to see you."  Her voice was intimate and rather sad.
+
+The two women shook hands.
+
+"Now are you sure we're not a bother to you?" said Mrs. Morel. 
+"I know what a farming life is."
+
+"Oh no!  We're only too thankful to see a new face, it's so
+lost up here."
+
+"I suppose so," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+They were taken through into the parlour--a long, low room,
+with a great bunch of guelder-roses in the fireplace.  There the
+women talked, whilst Paul went out to survey the land.  He was
+in the garden smelling the gillivers and looking at the plants,
+when the girl came out quickly to the heap of coal which stood
+by the fence.
+
+"I suppose these are cabbage-roses?" he said to her,
+pointing to the bushes along the fence.
+
+She looked at him with startled, big brown eyes.
+
+"I suppose they are cabbage-roses when they come out?"
+he said.
+
+"I don't know," she faltered.  "They're white with pink middles."
+
+"Then they're maiden-blush."
+
+Miriam flushed.  She had a beautiful warm colouring.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+"You don't have MUCH in your garden," he said.
+
+"This is our first year here," she answered, in a distant,
+rather superior way, drawing back and going indoors.  He did not notice,
+but went his round of exploration.  Presently his mother came out,
+and they went through the buildings.  Paul was hugely delighted.
+
+"And I suppose you have the fowls and calves and pigs
+to look after?" said Mrs. Morel to Mrs. Leivers.
+
+"No," replied the little woman.  "I can't find time to look
+after cattle, and I'm not used to it.  It's as much as I can
+do to keep going in the house."
+
+"Well, I suppose it is," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+Presently the girl came out.
+
+"Tea is ready, mother," she said in a musical, quiet voice.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Miriam, then we'll come," replied her mother,
+almost ingratiatingly.  "Would you CARE to have tea now, Mrs. Morel?"
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Morel.  "Whenever it's ready."
+
+Paul and his mother and Mrs. Leivers had tea together. 
+Then they went out into the wood that was flooded with bluebells,
+while fumy forget-me-nots were in the paths.  The mother and son were
+in ecstasy together.
+
+When they got back to the house, Mr. Leivers and Edgar,
+the eldest son, were in the kitchen.  Edgar was about eighteen. 
+Then Geoffrey and Maurice, big lads of twelve and thirteen, were in
+from school.  Mr. Leivers was a good-looking man in the prime of life,
+with a golden-brown moustache, and blue eyes screwed up against
+the weather.
+
+The boys were condescending, but Paul scarcely observed it. 
+They went round for eggs, scrambling into all sorts of places. 
+As they were feeding the fowls Miriam came out.  The boys took no
+notice of her.  One hen, with her yellow chickens, was in a coop. 
+Maurice took his hand full of corn and let the hen peck from it.
+
+"Durst you do it?" he asked of Paul.
+
+"Let's see," said Paul.
+
+He had a small hand, warm, and rather capable-looking.
+Miriam watched.  He held the corn to the hen.  The bird eyed it with her
+hard, bright eye, and suddenly made a peck into his hand.  He started,
+and laughed.  "Rap, rap, rap!" went the bird's beak in his palm. 
+He laughed again, and the other boys joined.
+
+"She knocks you, and nips you, but she never hurts," said Paul,
+when the last corn had gone.  " Now, Miriam," said Maurice, "you come
+an 'ave a go."
+
+"No," she cried, shrinking back.
+
+"Ha! baby.  The mardy-kid!" said her brothers.
+
+"It doesn't hurt a bit," said Paul.  "It only just nips
+rather nicely."
+
+"No," she still cried, shaking her black curls and shrinking.
+
+"She dursn't," said Geoffrey.  "She niver durst do anything
+except recite poitry."
+
+"Dursn't jump off a gate, dursn't tweedle, dursn't go on a slide,
+dursn't stop a girl hittin' her.  She can do nowt but go about thinkin'
+herself somebody.  'The Lady of the Lake.'  Yah!" cried Maurice.
+
+Miriam was crimson with shame and misery.
+
+"I dare do more than you," she cried.  "You're never anything
+but cowards and bullies."
+
+"Oh, cowards and bullies!" they repeated mincingly,
+mocking her speech.
+
+      "Not such a clown shall anger me,
+      A boor is answered silently,"
+
+he quoted against her, shouting with laughter.
+
+She went indoors.  Paul went with the boys into the orchard,
+where they had rigged up a parallel bar.  They did feats of strength. 
+He was more agile than strong, but it served.  He fingered a piece
+of apple-blossom that hung low on a swinging bough.
+
+"I wouldn't get the apple-blossom," said Edgar, the eldest brother. 
+"There'll be no apples next year."
+
+"I wasn't going to get it," replied Paul, going away.
+
+The boys felt hostile to him; they were more interested in their
+own pursuits.  He wandered back to the house to look for his mother. 
+As he went round the back, he saw Miriam kneeling in front of the
+hen-coop, some maize in her hand, biting her lip, and crouching
+in an intense attitude.  The hen was eyeing her wickedly.
+Very gingerly she put forward her hand.  The hen bobbed for her.
+She drew back quickly with a cry, half of fear, half of chagrin.
+
+"It won't hurt you," said Paul.
+
+She flushed crimson and started up.
+
+"I only wanted to try," she said in a low voice.
+
+"See, it doesn't hurt," he said, and, putting only two corns
+in his palm, he let the hen peck, peck, peck at his bare hand. 
+"It only makes you laugh," he said.
+
+She put her hand forward and dragged it away, tried again,
+and started back with a cry.  He frowned.
+
+"Why, I'd let her take corn from my face," said Paul,
+"only she bumps a bit.  She's ever so neat.  If she wasn't, look
+how much ground she'd peck up every day."
+
+He waited grimly, and watched.  At last Miriam let the bird
+peck from her hand.  She gave a little cry--fear, and pain because
+of fear--rather pathetic.  But she had done it, and she did it again.
+
+"There, you see," said the boy.  "It doesn't hurt, does it?"
+
+She looked at him with dilated dark eyes.
+
+"No," she laughed, trembling.
+
+Then she rose and went indoors.  She seemed to be in some way
+resentful of the boy.
+
+"He thinks I'm only a common girl," she thought, and she wanted
+to prove she was a grand person like the "Lady of the Lake".
+
+Paul found his mother ready to go home.  She smiled on her son. 
+He took the great bunch of flowers.  Mr. and Mrs. Leivers walked
+down the fields with them.  The hills were golden with evening;
+deep in the woods showed the darkening purple of bluebells. 
+It was everywhere perfectly stiff, save for the rustling of leaves
+and birds.
+
+"But it is a beautiful place," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Yes," answered Mr. Leivers; "it's a nice little place, if only
+it weren't for the rabbits.  The pasture's bitten down to nothing. 
+I dunno if ever I s'll get the rent off it."
+
+He clapped his hands, and the field broke into motion near
+the woods, brown rabbits hopping everywhere.
+
+"Would you believe it!" exclaimed Mrs. Morel.
+
+She and Paul went on alone together.
+
+"Wasn't it lovely, mother?" he said quietly.
+
+A thin moon was coming out.  His heart was full of happiness
+till it hurt.  His mother had to chatter, because she, too,
+wanted to cry with happiness.
+
+"Now WOULDN'T I help that man!" she said.  "WOULDN'T I see
+to the fowls and the young stock!  And I'D learn to milk, and I'D
+talk with him, and I'D plan with him.  My word, if I were his wife,
+the farm would be run, I know!  But there, she hasn't the strength--she
+simply hasn't the strength.  She ought never to have been burdened
+like it, you know.  I'm sorry for her, and I'm sorry for him too. 
+My word, if I'D had him, I shouldn't have thought him a bad husband! 
+Not that she does either; and she's very lovable."
+
+William came home again with his sweetheart at the Whitsuntide. 
+He had one week of his holidays then.  It was beautiful weather. 
+As a rule, William and Lily and Paul went out in the morning together
+for a walk.  William did not talk to his beloved much, except to tell
+her things from his boyhood.  Paul talked endlessly to both of them. 
+They lay down, all three, in a meadow by Minton Church.  On one side,
+by the Castle Farm, was a beautiful quivering screen of poplars. 
+Hawthorn was dropping from the hedges; penny daisies and ragged
+robin were in the field, like laughter.  William, a big fellow
+of twenty-three, thinner now and even a bit gaunt, lay back
+in the sunshine and dreamed, while she fingered with his hair. 
+Paul went gathering the big daisies.  She had taken off her hat;
+her hair was black as a horse's mane.  Paul came back and threaded
+daisies in her jet-black hair--big spangles of white and yellow, and just
+a pink touch of ragged robin.
+
+"Now you look like a young witch-woman," the boy said to her. 
+"Doesn't she, William?"
+
+Lily laughed.  William opened his eyes and looked at her. 
+In his gaze was a certain baffled look of misery and fierce appreciation.
+
+"Has he made a sight of me?" she asked, laughing down on
+her lover.
+
+"That he has!" said William, smiling.
+
+He looked at her.  Her beauty seemed to hurt him.  He glanced
+at her flower-decked head and frowned.
+
+"You look nice enough, if that's what you want to know,"
+he said.
+
+And she walked without her hat.  In a little while William
+recovered, and was rather tender to her.  Coming to a bridge,
+he carved her initials and his in a heart.
+
+      L. L. W.
+      W. M.
+
+She watched his strong, nervous hand, with its glistening
+hairs and freckles, as he carved, and she seemed fascinated by it.
+
+All the time there was a feeling of sadness and warmth,
+and a certain tenderness in the house, whilst William and Lily
+were at home.  But often he got irritable.  She had brought,
+for an eight-days' stay, five dresses and six blouses.
+
+"Oh, would you mind," she said to Annie, "washing me these
+two blouses, and these things?"
+
+And Annie stood washing when William and Lily went out the
+next morning.  Mrs. Morel was furious.  And sometimes the young man,
+catching a glimpse of his sweetheart's attitude towards his sister,
+hated her.
+
+On Sunday morning she looked very beautiful in a dress
+of foulard, silky and sweeping, and blue as a jay-bird's feather,
+and in a large cream hat covered with many roses, mostly crimson. 
+Nobody could admire her enough.  But in the evening, when she was
+going out, she asked again:
+
+"Chubby, have you got my gloves?"
+
+"Which?" asked William.
+
+"My new black SUEDE."
+
+"No."
+
+There was a hunt.  She had lost them.
+
+"Look here, mother," said William, "that's the fourth pair
+she's lost since Christmas--at five shillings a pair!"
+
+"You only gave me TWO of them," she remonstrated.
+
+And in the evening, after supper, he stood on the hearthrug
+whilst she sat on the sofa, and he seemed to hate her.  In the
+afternoon he had left her whilst he went to see some old friend. 
+She had sat looking at a book.  After supper William wanted to write
+a letter.
+
+"Here is your book, Lily," said Mrs. Morel.  "Would you care
+to go on with it for a few minutes?"
+
+"No, thank you," said the girl.  "I will sit still."
+
+"But it is so dull."
+
+William scribbled irritably at a great rate.  As he sealed
+the envelope he said:
+
+"Read a book!  Why, she's never read a book in her life."
+
+"Oh, go along!" said Mrs. Morel, cross with the exaggeration,
+
+"It's true, mother--she hasn't," he cried, jumping up and taking
+his old position on the hearthrug.  "She's never read a book in her life."
+
+"'Er's like me," chimed in Morel.  "'Er canna see what there
+is i' books, ter sit borin' your nose in 'em for, nor more can I."
+
+"But you shouldn't say these things," said Mrs. Morel to her son.
+
+"But it's true, mother--she CAN'T read.  What did you give her?"
+
+"Well, I gave her a little thing of Annie Swan's. Nobody wants
+to read dry stuff on Sunday afternoon."
+
+"Well, I'll bet she didn't read ten lines of it."
+
+"You are mistaken," said his mother.
+
+All the time Lily sat miserably on the sofa.  He turned
+to her swiftly.
+
+"DID you ready any?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I did," she replied.
+
+"How much?"
+
+"l don't know how many pages."
+
+"Tell me ONE THING you read."
+
+She could not.
+
+She never got beyond the second page.  He read a great deal,
+and had a quick, active intelligence.  She could understand nothing but
+love-making and chatter.  He was accustomed to having all his thoughts
+sifted through his mother's mind; so, when he wanted companionship,
+and was asked in reply to be the billing and twittering lover,
+he hated his betrothed.
+
+"You know, mother," he said, when he was alone with her at night,
+"she's no idea of money, she's so wessel-brained. When she's paid,
+she'll suddenly buy such rot as marrons glaces, and then I have
+to buy her season ticket, and her extras, even her underclothing. 
+And she wants to get married, and I think myself we might as well get
+married next year.  But at this rate---"
+
+"A fine mess of a marriage it would be," replied his mother. 
+"I should consider it again, my boy."
+
+"Oh, well, I've gone too far to break off now," he said,
+"and so I shall get married as soon as I can."
+
+"Very well, my boy.  If you will, you will, and there's no
+stopping you; but I tell you, I can't sleep when I think about it."
+
+"Oh, she'll be all right, mother.  We shall manage."
+
+"And she lets you buy her underclothing?" asked the mother.
+
+"Well," he began apologetically, "she didn't ask me; but one
+morning--and it WAS cold--I found her on the station shivering, not able
+to keep still; so I asked her if she was well wrapped up.  She said: 
+'I think so.'  So I said:  'Have you got warm underthings on?' 
+And she said:  'No, they were cotton.'  I asked her why on earth she
+hadn't got something thicker on in weather like that, and she said
+because she HAD nothing.  And there she is--a bronchial subject! 
+I HAD to take her and get some warm things.  Well, mother, I shouldn't
+mind the money if we had any.  And, you know, she OUGHT to keep enough
+to pay for her season-ticket; but no, she comes to me about that,
+and I have to find the money."
+
+"It's a poor lookout," said Mrs. Morel bitterly.
+
+He was pale, and his rugged face, that used to be so perfectly
+careless and laughing, was stamped with conflict and despair.
+
+"But I can't give her up now; it's gone too far," he said. 
+"And, besides, for SOME things I couldn't do without her."
+
+"My boy, remember you're taking your life in your hands,"
+said Mrs. Morel.  "NOTHING is as bad as a marriage that's
+a hopeless failure.  Mine was bad enough, God knows, and ought
+to teach you something; but it might have been worse by a long chalk."
+
+He leaned with his back against the side of the chimney-piece,
+his hands in his pockets.  He was a big, raw-boned man, who looked
+as if he would go to the world's end if he wanted to.  But she saw
+the despair on his face.
+
+"I couldn't give her up now," he said.
+
+"Well," she said, "remember there are worse wrongs than breaking
+off an engagement."
+
+"I can't give her up NOW," he said.
+
+The clock ticked on; mother and son remained in silence,
+a conflict between them; but he would say no more.  At last she said:
+
+"Well, go to bed, my son.  You'll feel better in the morning,
+and perhaps you'll know better."
+
+He kissed her, and went.  She raked the fire.  Her heart
+was heavy now as it had never been.  Before, with her husband,
+things had seemed to be breaking down in her, but they did not
+destroy her power to live.  Now her soul felt lamed in itself. 
+It was her hope that was struck.
+
+And so often William manifested the same hatred towards
+his betrothed.  On the last evening at home he was railing against her.
+
+"Well," he said, "if you don't believe me, what she's like,
+would you believe she has been confirmed three times?"
+
+"Nonsense!" laughed Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Nonsense or not, she HAS!  That's what confirmation means
+for her--a bit of a theatrical show where she can cut a figure."
+
+"I haven't, Mrs. Morel!" cried the girl--"I haven't! it
+is not true!"
+
+"What!" he cried, flashing round on her.  "Once in Bromley,
+once in Beckenham, and once somewhere else."
+
+"Nowhere else!" she said, in tears--"nowhere else!"
+
+"It WAS!  And if it wasn't why were you confirmed TWICE?"
+
+"Once I was only fourteen, Mrs. Morel," she pleaded,
+tears in her eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Morel; "I can quite understand it, child.  Take no
+notice of him.  You ought to be ashamed, William, saying such things."
+
+"But it's true.  She's religious--she had blue velvet
+Prayer-Books--and she's not as much religion, or anything else,
+in her than that table-leg. Gets confirmed three times for show,
+to show herself off, and that's how she is in EVERYTHING--
+EVERYTHING!"
+
+The girl sat on the sofa, crying.  She was not strong.
+
+"As for LOVE!" he cried, "you might as well ask a fly to love you! 
+It'll love settling on you---"
+
+"Now, say no more," commanded Mrs. Morel.  "If you want
+to say these things, you must find another place than this. 
+I am ashamed of you, William!  Why don't you be more manly. 
+To do nothing but find fault with a girl, and then pretend you're
+engaged to her! "
+
+Mrs. Morel subsided in wrath and indignation.
+
+William was silent, and later he repented, kissed and comforted
+the girl.  Yet it was true, what he had said.  He hated her.
+
+When they were going away, Mrs. Morel accompanied them as far
+as Nottingham.  It was a long way to Keston station.
+
+"You know, mother," he said to her, "Gyp's shallow. 
+Nothing goes deep with her."
+
+"William, I WISH you wouldn't say these things," said Mrs. Morel,
+very uncomfortable for the girl who walked beside her.
+
+"But it doesn't, mother.  She's very much in love with me now,
+but if I died she'd have forgotten me in three months."
+
+Mrs. Morel was afraid.  Her heart beat furiously, hearing the
+quiet bitterness of her son's last speech.
+
+"How do you know?" she replied.  "You DON'T know, and therefore
+you've no right to say such a thing."
+
+"He's always saying these things!" cried the girl.
+
+"In three months after I was buried you'd have somebody else,
+and I should be forgotten," he said.  "And that's your love!"
+
+Mrs. Morel saw them into the train in Nottingham, then she
+returned home.
+
+"There's one comfort," she said to Paul--"he'll never have any
+money to marry on, that I AM sure of.  And so she'll save him that way."
+
+So she took cheer.  Matters were not yet very desperate. 
+She firmly believed William would never marry his Gipsy.  She waited,
+and she kept Paul near to her.
+
+All summer long William's letters had a feverish tone; he seemed
+unnatural and intense.  Sometimes he was exaggeratedly jolly,
+usually he was flat and bitter in his letter.
+
+"Ah," his mother said, "I'm afraid he's ruining himself
+against that creature, who isn't worthy of his love--no, no more
+than a rag doll."
+
+He wanted to come home.  The midsummer holiday was gone;
+it was a long while to Christmas.  He wrote in wild excitement,
+saying he could come for Saturday and Sunday at Goose Fair, the first
+week in October.
+
+"You are not well, my boy," said his mother, when she saw him. 
+She was almost in tears at having him to herself again.
+
+"No, I've not been well," he said.  "I've seemed to have
+a dragging cold all the last month, but it's going, I think."
+
+It was sunny October weather.  He seemed wild with joy,
+like a schoolboy escaped; then again he was silent and reserved. 
+He was more gaunt than ever, and there was a haggard look in his eyes.
+
+"You are doing too much," said his mother to him.
+
+He was doing extra work, trying to make some money to marry on,
+he said.  He only talked to his mother once on the Saturday night;
+then he was sad and tender about his beloved.
+
+"And yet, you know, mother, for all that, if I died she'd be
+broken-hearted for two months, and then she'd start to forget me. 
+You'd see, she'd never come home here to look at my grave,
+not even once."
+
+"Why, William," said his mother, "you're not going to die,
+so why talk about it?"
+
+"But whether or not---" he replied.
+
+"And she can't help it.  She is like that, and if you choose
+her--well, you can't grumble," said his mother.
+
+On the Sunday morning, as he was putting his collar on:
+
+"Look," he said to his mother, holding up his chin, "what a
+rash my collar's made under my chin!"
+
+Just at the junction of chin and throat was a big red inflammation.
+
+"It ought not to do that," said his mother.  "Here, put a bit
+of this soothing ointment on.  You should wear different collars."
+
+He went away on Sunday midnight, seeming better and more solid
+for his two days at home.
+
+On Tuesday morning came a telegram from London that he was ill. 
+Mrs. Morel got off her knees from washing the floor, read the telegram,
+called a neighbour, went to her landlady and borrowed a sovereign,
+put on her things, and set off.  She hurried to Keston, caught an
+express for London in Nottingham.  She had to wait in Nottingham
+nearly an hour.  A small figure in her black bonnet, she was
+anxiously asking the porters if they knew how to get to Elmers End. 
+The journey was three hours.  She sat in her corner in a kind of stupor,
+never moving.  At King's Cross still no one could tell her how
+to get to Elmers End.  Carrying her string bag, that contained
+her nightdress, a comb and brush, she went from person to person. 
+At last they sent her underground to Cannon Street.
+
+It was six o'clock when she arrived at William's lodging. 
+The blinds were not down.
+
+"How is he?" she asked.
+
+"No better," said the landlady.
+
+She followed the woman upstairs.  William lay on the bed,
+with bloodshot eyes, his face rather discoloured.  The clothes were
+tossed about, there was no fire in the room, a glass of milk stood
+on the stand at his bedside.  No one had been with him.
+
+"Why, my son!" said the mother bravely.
+
+He did not answer.  He looked at her, but did not see her. 
+Then he began to say, in a dull voice, as if repeating a letter
+from dictation:  "Owing to a leakage in the hold of this vessel,
+the sugar had set, and become converted into rock.  It needed hacking---"
+
+He was quite unconscious.  It had been his business to examine
+some such cargo of sugar in the Port of London.
+
+"How long has he been like this?" the mother asked the landlady.
+
+"He got home at six o'clock on Monday morning, and he seemed
+to sleep all day; then in the night we heard him talking, and this
+morning he asked for you.  So I wired, and we fetched the doctor."
+
+"Will you have a fire made?"
+
+Mrs. Morel tried to soothe her son, to keep him still.
+
+The doctor came.  It was pneumonia, and, he said, a peculiar
+erysipelas, which had started under the chin where the collar chafed,
+and was spreading over the face.  He hoped it would not get to the brain.
+
+Mrs. Morel settled down to nurse.  She prayed for William,
+prayed that he would recognise her.  But the young man's face grew
+more discoloured.  In the night she struggled with him.  He raved,
+and raved, and would not come to consciousness.  At two o'clock,
+in a dreadful paroxysm, he died.
+
+Mrs. Morel sat perfectly still for an hour in the lodging bedroom;
+then she roused the household.
+
+At six o'clock, with the aid of the charwoman, she laid him out;
+then she went round the dreary London village to the registrar
+and the doctor.
+
+At nine o'clock to the cottage on Scargill Street came
+another wire:
+
+"William died last night.  Let father come, bring money." 
+
+Annie, Paul, and Arthur were at home; Mr. Morel was gone
+to work.  The three children said not a word.  Annie began to whimper
+with fear; Paul set off for his father.
+
+It was a beautiful day.  At Brinsley pit the white steam melted
+slowly in the sunshine of a soft blue sky; the wheels of the headstocks
+twinkled high up; the screen, shuffling its coal into the trucks,
+made a busy noise.
+
+"I want my father; he's got to go to London," said the boy
+to the first man he met on the bank.
+
+"Tha wants Walter Morel?  Go in theer an' tell Joe Ward."
+
+Paul went into the little top office.
+
+"I want my father; he's got to go to London."
+
+"Thy feyther?  Is he down?  What's his name?"
+
+"Mr. Morel."
+
+"What, Walter?  Is owt amiss?"
+
+"He's got to go to London."
+
+The man went to the telephone and rang up the bottom office.
+
+"Walter Morel's wanted, number 42, Hard.  Summat's amiss;
+there's his lad here."
+
+Then he turned round to Paul.
+
+"He'll be up in a few minutes," he said.
+
+Paul wandered out to the pit-top. He watched the chair come up,
+with its wagon of coal.  The great iron cage sank back on its rest,
+a full carfle was hauled off, an empty tram run on to the chair,
+a bell ting'ed somewhere, the chair heaved, then dropped like
+a stone.
+
+Paul did not realise William was dead; it was impossible,
+with such a bustle going on.  The puller-off swung the small truck
+on to the turn-table, another man ran with it along the bank down
+the curving lines.
+
+"And William is dead, and my mother's in London, and what will
+she be doing?" the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum.
+
+He watched chair after chair come up, and still no father. 
+At last, standing beside a wagon, a man's form! the chair sank on
+its rests, Morel stepped off.  He was slightly lame from an accident.
+
+"Is it thee, Paul?  Is 'e worse?"
+
+"You've got to go to London."
+
+The two walked off the pit-bank, where men were watching curiously. 
+As they came out and went along the railway, with the
+sunny autumn field on one side and a wall of trucks 
+on the other, Morel said in a frightened voice:
+
+"'E's niver gone, child?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When wor't?"
+
+"Last night.  We had a telegram from my mother."
+
+Morel walked on a few strides, then leaned up against
+a truck-side, his hand over his eyes.  He was not crying. 
+Paul stood looking round, waiting.  On the weighing
+machine a truck trundled slowly.  Paul saw everything,
+except his father leaning against the truck as if he were tired.
+
+Morel had only once before been to London.  He set off,
+scared and peaked, to help his wife.  That was on Tuesday. 
+The children were left alone in the house.  Paul went to work,
+Arthur went to school, and Annie had in a friend to be with her.
+
+On Saturday night, as Paul was turning the corner, coming home
+from Keston, he saw his mother and father, who had come to Sethley
+Bridge Station.  They were walking in silence in the dark, tired,
+straggling apart.  The boy waited.
+
+"Mother!" he said, in the darkness.
+
+Mrs. Morel's small figure seemed not to observe.  He spoke again.
+
+"Paul!" she said, uninterestedly.
+
+She let him kiss her, but she seemed unaware of him.
+
+In the house she was the same--small, white, and mute. 
+She noticed nothing, she said nothing, only:
+
+"The coffin will be here to-night, Walter.  You'd better see
+about some help."  Then, turning to the children:  "We're bringing
+him home."
+
+Then she relapsed into the same mute looking into space,
+her hands folded on her lap.  Paul, looking at her, felt he could
+not breathe.  The house was dead silent.
+
+"I went to work, mother," he said plaintively.
+
+"Did you?" she answered, dully.
+
+After half an hour Morel, troubled and bewildered, came in again.
+
+"Wheer s'll we ha'e him when he DOEScome?" he asked his wife.
+
+"In the front-room."
+
+"Then I'd better shift th' table?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"An' ha'e him across th' chairs?"
+
+"You know there---Yes, I suppose so."
+
+Morel and Paul went, with a candle, into the parlour. 
+There was no gas there.  The father unscrewed the top of the big
+mahogany oval table, and cleared the middle of the room; then he
+arranged six chairs opposite each other, so that the coffin could
+stand on their beds.
+
+"You niver seed such a length as he is!" said the miner,
+and watching anxiously as he worked.
+
+Paul went to the bay window and looked out.  The ash-tree
+stood monstrous and black in front of the wide darkness. 
+It was a faintly luminous night.  Paul went back to his mother.
+
+At ten o'clock Morel called:
+
+"He's here!"
+
+Everyone started.  There was a noise of unbarring and unlocking
+the front door, which opened straight from the night into the room.
+
+"Bring another candle," called Morel.
+
+Annie and Arthur went.  Paul followed with his mother. 
+He stood with his arm round her waist in the inner doorway. 
+Down the middle of the cleared room waited six chairs, face to face. 
+In the window, against the lace curtains, Arthur held up one candle,
+and by the open door, against the night, Annie stood leaning forward,
+her brass candlestick glittering.
+
+There was the noise of wheels.  Outside in the darkness of the
+street below Paul could see horses and a black vehicle, one lamp,
+and a few pale faces; then some men, miners, all in their shirt-sleeves,
+seemed to struggle in the obscurity.  Presently two men appeared,
+bowed beneath a great weight.  It was Morel and his neighbour.
+
+"Steady!" called Morel, out of breath.
+
+He and his fellow mounted the steep garden step, heaved into
+the candlelight with their gleaming coffin-end. Limbs of other men
+were seen struggling behind.  Morel and Burns, in front, staggered;
+the great dark weight swayed.
+
+"Steady, steady!" cried Morel, as if in pain.
+
+All the six bearers were up in the small garden, holding the
+great coffin aloft.  There were three more steps to the door.
+The yellow lamp of the carriage shone alone
+down the black road.
+
+"Now then!" said Morel.
+
+The coffin swayed, the men began to mount the three steps
+with their load.  Annie's candle flickered, and she whimpered
+as the first men appeared, and the limbs and bowed heads of six
+men struggled to climb into the room, bearing the coffin that rode
+like sorrow on their living flesh.
+
+"Oh, my son--my son!"  Mrs. Morel sang softly, and each time
+the coffin swung to the unequal climbing of the men:  "Oh, my son--my
+son--my son!"
+
+"Mother!" Paul whimpered, his hand round her waist.
+
+She did not hear.
+
+"Oh, my son--my son!" she repeated.
+
+Paul saw drops of sweat fall from his father's brow. 
+Six men were in the room--six coatless men, with yielding,
+struggling limbs, filling the room and knocking against the furniture. 
+The coffin veered, and was gently lowered on to the chairs. 
+The sweat fell from Morel's face on its boards.
+
+"My word, he's a weight!" said a man, and the five miners sighed,
+bowed, and, trembling with the struggle, descended the steps again,
+closing the door behind them.
+
+The family was alone in the parlour with the great polished box. 
+William, when laid out, was six feet four inches long.  Like a monument
+lay the bright brown, ponderous coffin.  Paul thought it would never
+be got out of the room again.  His mother was stroking the polished wood.
+
+They buried him on the Monday in the little cemetery on the
+hillside that looks over the fields at the big church and the houses. 
+It was sunny, and the white chrysanthemums frilled themselves
+in the warmth.
+
+Mrs. Morel could not be persuaded, after this, to talk and
+take her old bright interest in life.  She remained shut off. 
+All the way home in the train she had said to herself : "If only it
+could have been me! "
+
+When Paul came home at night he found his mother sitting,
+her day's work done, with hands folded in her lap upon her
+coarse apron.  She always used to have changed her dress and put
+on a black apron, before.  Now Annie set his supper, and his mother
+sat looking blankly in front of her, her mouth shut tight. 
+Then he beat his brains for news to tell her.
+
+"Mother, Miss Jordan was down to-day, and she said my sketch
+of a colliery at work was beautiful."
+
+But Mrs. Morel took no notice.  Night after night he forced
+himself to tell her things, although she did not listen.  It drove
+him almost insane to have her thus.  At last:
+
+"What's a-matter, mother?" he asked.
+
+She did not hear.
+
+"What's a-matter?" he persisted.  "Mother, what's a-matter?"
+
+"You know what's the matter," she said irritably, turning away.
+
+The lad--he was sixteen years old--went to bed drearily. 
+He was cut off and wretched through October, November and December. 
+His mother tried, but she could not rouse herself.  She could only
+brood on her dead son; he had been let to die so cruelly.
+
+At last, on December 23, with his five shillings Christmas-box
+in his pocket, Paul wandered blindly home.  His mother looked at him,
+and her heart stood still.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"I'm badly, mother!" he replied.  "Mr. Jordan gave me five
+shillings for a Christmas-box!"
+
+He handed it to her with trembling hands.  She put it on the table.
+
+"You aren't glad!" he reproached her; but he trembled violently.
+
+"Where hurts you?" she said, unbuttoning his overcoat.
+
+It was the old question.
+
+"I feel badly, mother."
+
+She undressed him and put him to bed.  He had pneumonia dangerously,
+the doctor said.
+
+"Might he never have had it if I'd kept him at home, not let
+him go to Nottingham?" was one of the first things she asked.
+
+"He might not have been so bad," said the doctor.
+
+Mrs. Morel stood condemned on her own ground.
+
+"I should have watched the living, not the dead," she told herself.
+
+Paul was very ill.  His mother lay in bed at nights with him;
+they could not afford a nurse.  He grew worse, and the crisis approached. 
+One night he tossed into consciousness in the ghastly, sickly feeling
+of dissolution, when all the cells in the body seem in intense
+irritability to be breaking down, and consciousness makes a last
+flare of struggle, like madness.
+
+"I s'll die, mother!" be cried, heaving for breath on the pillow.
+
+She lifted him up, crying in a small voice:
+
+"Oh, my son--my son!"
+
+That brought him to.  He realised her.  His whole will rose
+up and arrested him.  He put his head on her breast, and took ease
+of her for love.
+
+"For some things," said his aunt, "it was a good thing Paul
+was ill that Christmas.  I believe it saved his mother."
+
+Paul was in bed for seven weeks.  He got up white and fragile. 
+His father had bought him a pot of scarlet and gold tulips. 
+They used to flame in the window in the March sunshine as he sat
+on the sofa chattering to his mother.  The two knitted together in
+perfect intimacy.  Mrs. Morel's life now rooted itself in Paul.
+
+William had been a prophet.  Mrs. Morel had a little present
+and a letter from Lily at Christmas.  Mrs. Morel's sister had
+a letter at the New Year.
+
+"I was at a ball last night.  Some delightful people were there,
+and I enjoyed myself thoroughly," said the letter.  "I had every
+dance--did not sit out one."
+
+Mrs. Morel never heard any more of her.
+
+Morel and his wife were gentle with each other for some time
+after the death of their son.  He would go into a kind of daze,
+staring wide-eyed and blank across the room.  Then he got up suddenly
+and hurried out to the Three Spots, returning in his normal state. 
+But never in his life would he go for a walk up Shepstone,
+past the office where his son had worked, and he always avoided
+the cemetery.
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE
+
+PAUL had been many times up to Willey Farm during the autumn. 
+He was friends with the two youngest boys.  Edgar the eldest, would not
+condescend at first.  And Miriam also refused to be approached. 
+She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. 
+The girl was romantic in her soul.  Everywhere was a Walter Scott
+heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. 
+She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl
+in her own imagination.  And she was afraid lest this boy,
+who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero,
+who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant,
+and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her
+simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath;
+so she held aloof.
+
+Her great companion was her mother.  They were both brown-eyed,
+and inclined to be mystical, such women as treasure religion
+inside them, breathe it in their nostrils, and see the whole of life
+in a mist thereof.  So to Miriam, Christ and God made one great figure,
+which she loved tremblingly and passionately when a tremendous sunset
+burned out the western sky, and Ediths, and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian de
+Bois Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy Mannerings, rustled the sunny leaves
+in the morning, or sat in her bedroom aloft, alone, when it snowed. 
+That was life to her.  For the rest, she drudged in the house,
+which work she would not have minded had not her clean red floor been
+mucked up immediately by the trampling farm-boots of her brothers. 
+She madly wanted her little brother of four to let her swathe
+him and stifle him in her love; she went to church reverently,
+with bowed head, and quivered in anguish from the vulgarity of the
+other choir-girls and from the common-sounding voice of the curate;
+she fought with her brothers, whom she considered brutal louts;
+and she held not her father in too high esteem because he did not
+carry any mystical ideals cherished in his heart, but only wanted
+to have as easy a time as he could, and his meals when he was ready
+for them.
+
+She hated her position as swine-girl. She wanted to be considered. 
+She wanted to learn, thinking that if she could read, as Paul said
+he could read, "Colomba", or the "Voyage autour de ma Chambre", the
+world would have a different face for her and a deepened respect. 
+She could not be princess by wealth or standing.  So she was mad
+to have learning whereon to pride herself.  For she was different
+from other folk, and must not be scooped up among the common fry. 
+Learning was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire.
+
+Her beauty--that of a shy, wild, quiveringly sensitive
+thing--seemed nothing to her.  Even her soul, so strong for rhapsody,
+was not enough.  She must have something to reinforce her pride,
+because she felt different from other people.  Paul she eyed
+rather wistfully.  On the whole, she scorned the male sex. 
+But here was a new specimen, quick, light, graceful, who could
+be gentle and who could be sad, and who was clever, and who knew
+a lot, and who had a death in the family.  The boy's poor
+morsel of learning exalted him almost sky-high in her esteem. 
+Yet she tried hard to scorn him, because he would not see in her
+the princess but only the swine-girl. And he scarcely observed her.
+
+Then he was so ill, and she felt he would be weak.  Then she
+would be stronger than he.  Then she could love him.  If she could
+be mistress of him in his weakness, take care of him, if he could
+depend on her, if she could, as it were, have him in her arms,
+how she would love him!
+
+As soon as the skies brightened and plum-blossom was out,
+Paul drove off in the milkman's heavy float up to Willey Farm. 
+Mr. Leivers shouted in a kindly fashion at the boy, then clicked
+to the horse as they climbed the hill slowly, in the freshness
+of the morning.  White clouds went on their way, crowding to the
+back of the hills that were rousing in the springtime.  The water
+of Nethermere lay below, very blue against the seared meadows and
+the thorn-trees.
+
+It was four and a half miles' drive.  Tiny buds on the hedges,
+vivid as copper-green, were opening into rosettes; and thrushes called,
+and blackbirds shrieked and scolded.  It was a new, glamorous world.
+
+Miriam, peeping through the kitchen window, saw the horse walk
+through the big white gate into the farmyard that was backed by the
+oak-wood, still bare.  Then a youth in a heavy overcoat climbed down. 
+He put up his hands for the whip and the rug that the good-looking,
+ruddy farmer handed down to him.
+
+Miriam appeared in the doorway.  She was nearly sixteen,
+very beautiful, with her warm colouring, her gravity, her eyes
+dilating suddenly like an ecstasy.
+
+"I say," said Paul, turning shyly aside, "your daffodils
+are nearly out.  Isn't it early?  But don't they look cold?"
+
+"Cold!" said Miriam, in her musical, caressing voice.
+
+"The green on their buds---" and he faltered into silence timidly.
+
+"Let me take the rug," said Miriam over-gently.
+
+"I can carry it," he answered, rather injured.  But he yielded
+it to her.
+
+Then Mrs. Leivers appeared.
+
+"I'm sure you're tired and cold," she said.  "Let me take
+your coat.  It IS heavy.  You mustn't walk far in it."
+
+She helped him off with his coat.  He was quite unused
+to such attention.  She was almost smothered under its weight.
+
+"Why, mother," laughed the farmer as he passed through the kitchen,
+swinging the great milk-churns, "you've got almost more than you
+can manage there."
+
+She beat up the sofa cushions for the youth.
+
+The kitchen was very small and irregular.  The farm had been
+originally a labourer's cottage.  And the furniture was old and battered. 
+But Paul loved it--loved the sack-bag that formed the hearthrug,
+and the funny little corner under the stairs, and the small window
+deep in the corner, through which, bending a little, be could see
+the plum trees in the back garden and the lovely round hills beyond.
+
+"Won't you lie down?" said Mrs. Leivers.
+
+"Oh no; I'm not tired," he said.  "Isn't it lovely coming out,
+don't you think?  I saw a sloe-bush in blossom and a lot of celandines. 
+I'm glad it's sunny."
+
+"Can I give you anything to eat or to drink?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"How's your mother?"
+
+"I think she's tired now.  I think she's had too much to do. 
+Perhaps in a little while she'll go to Skegness with me.  Then she'll
+be able to rest.  I s'll be glad if she can."
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Leivers.  "It's a wonder she isn't
+ill herself."
+
+Miriam was moving about preparing dinner.  Paul watched
+everything that happened.  His face was pale and thin, but his eyes
+were quick and bright with life as ever.  He watched the strange,
+almost rhapsodic way in which the girl moved about, carrying a great
+stew-jar to the oven, or looking in the saucepan.  The atmosphere
+was different from that of his own home, where everything seemed
+so ordinary.  When Mr. Leivers called loudly outside to the horse,
+that was reaching over to feed on the rose-bushes in the garden,
+the girl started, looked round with dark eyes, as if something had
+come breaking in on her world.  There was a sense of silence inside
+the house and out.  Miriam seemed as in some dreamy tale, a maiden
+in bondage, her spirit dreaming in a land far away and magical. 
+And her discoloured, old blue frock and her broken boots seemed
+only like the romantic rags of King Cophetua's beggar-maid.
+
+She suddenly became aware of his keen blue eyes upon her,
+taking her all in.  Instantly her broken boots and her frayed old
+frock hurt her.  She resented his seeing everything.  Even he knew
+that her stocking was not pulled up.  She went into the scullery,
+blushing deeply.  And afterwards her hands trembled slightly at
+her work.  She nearly dropped all she handled.  When her inside
+dream was shaken, her body quivered with trepidation.  She resented
+that he saw so much.
+
+Mrs. Leivers sat for some time talking to the boy, although she
+was needed at her work.  She was too polite to leave him. 
+Presently she excused herself and rose.  After a while she looked
+into the tin saucepan.
+
+"Oh DEAR, Miriam," she cried, "these potatoes have boiled dry!"
+
+Miriam started as if she had been stung.
+
+"HAVE they, mother?" she cried.
+
+"I shouldn't care, Miriam," said the mother, "if I hadn't
+trusted them to you."  She peered into the pan.
+
+The girl stiffened as if from a blow.  Her dark eyes dilated;
+she remained standing in the same spot.
+
+"Well," she answered, gripped tight in self-conscious shame,
+"I'm sure I looked at them five minutes since."
+
+"Yes," said the mother, "I know it's easily done."
+
+"They're not much burned," said Paul.  "It doesn't matter,
+does it?"
+
+Mrs. Leivers looked at the youth with her brown, hurt eyes.
+
+"It wouldn't matter but for the boys," she said to him. 
+"Only Miriam knows what a trouble they make if the potatoes are
+'caught'."
+
+"Then," thought Paul to himself, "you shouldn't let them make
+a trouble."
+
+After a while Edgar came in.  He wore leggings, and his boots
+were covered with earth.  He was rather small, rather formal,
+for a farmer.  He glanced at Paul, nodded to him distantly,
+and said:
+
+"Dinner ready?"
+
+"Nearly, Edgar," replied the mother apologetically.
+
+"I'm ready for mine," said the young man, taking up the newspaper
+and reading.  Presently the rest of the family trooped in. 
+Dinner was served.  The meal went rather brutally.  The over-gentleness
+and apologetic tone of the mother brought out all the brutality
+of manners in the sons.  Edgar tasted the potatoes, moved his mouth
+quickly like a rabbit, looked indignantly at his mother, and said:
+
+"These potatoes are burnt, mother."
+
+"Yes, Edgar.  I forgot them for a minute.  Perhaps you'll
+have bread if you can't eat them."
+
+Edgar looked in anger across at Miriam.
+
+"What was Miriam doing that she couldn't attend to them?"
+he said.
+
+Miriam looked up.  Her mouth opened, her dark eyes blazed
+and winced, but she said nothing.  She swallowed her anger
+and her shame, bowing her dark head.
+
+"I'm sure she was trying hard," said the mother.
+
+"She hasn't got sense even to boil the potatoes," said Edgar. 
+"What is she kept at home for?"
+
+"On'y for eating everything that's left in th' pantry," said Maurice.
+
+"They don't forget that potato-pie against our Miriam,"
+laughed the father.
+
+She was utterly humiliated.  The mother sat in silence,
+suffering, like some saint out of place at the brutal board.
+
+It puzzled Paul.  He wondered vaguely why all this intense feeling
+went running because of a few burnt potatoes.  The mother exalted
+everything--even a bit of housework--to the plane of a religious trust. 
+The sons resented this; they felt themselves cut away underneath, and
+they answered with brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness.
+
+Paul was just opening out from childhood into manhood. 
+This atmosphere, where everything took a religious value, came with
+a subtle fascination to him.  There was something in the air. 
+His own mother was logical.  Here there was something different,
+something he loved, something that at times he hated.
+
+Miriam quarrelled with her brothers fiercely.  Later in
+the afternoon, when they had gone away again, her mother said:
+
+"You disappointed me at dinner-time, Miriam."
+
+The girl dropped her head.
+
+"They are such BRUTES!" she suddenly cried, looking up
+with flashing eyes.
+
+"But hadn't you promised not to answer them?" said the mother. 
+"And I believed in you.  I CAN'T stand it when you wrangle."
+
+"But they're so hateful!" cried Miriam, "and--and LOW."
+
+"Yes, dear.  But how often have I asked you not to answer
+Edgar back?  Can't you let him say what he likes?"
+
+"But why should he say what he likes?"
+
+"Aren't you strong enough to bear it, Miriam, if even for my sake? 
+Are you so weak that you must wrangle with them?"
+
+Mrs. Leivers stuck unflinchingly to this doctrine of "the other
+cheek".  She could not instil it at all into the boys.  With the
+girls she succeeded better, and Miriam was the child of her heart. 
+The boys loathed the other cheek when it was presented to them. 
+Miriam was often sufficiently lofty to turn it.  Then they spat
+on her and hated her.  But she walked in her proud humility,
+living within herself.
+
+There was always this feeling of jangle and discord in the
+Leivers family.  Although the boys resented so bitterly this eternal
+appeal to their deeper feelings of resignation and proud humility,
+yet it had its effect on them.  They could not establish between themselves
+and an outsider just the ordinary human feeling and unexaggerated
+friendship; they were always restless for the something deeper. 
+Ordinary folk seemed shallow to them, trivial and inconsiderable. 
+And so they were unaccustomed, painfully uncouth in the simplest
+social intercourse, suffering, and yet insolent in their superiority. 
+Then beneath was the yearning for the soul-intimacy to which they could
+not attain because they were too dumb, and every approach to close
+connection was blocked by their clumsy contempt of other people. 
+They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally
+near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps,
+they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.
+
+Paul fell under Mrs. Leivers's spell.  Everything had
+a religious and intensified meaning when he was with her. 
+His soul, hurt, highly developed, sought her as if for nourishment. 
+Together they seemed to sift the vital fact from an experience.
+
+Miriam was her mother's daughter.  In the sunshine of the
+afternoon mother and daughter went down the fields with him. 
+They looked for nests.  There was a jenny wren's in the hedge
+by the orchard.
+
+"I DO want you to see this," said Mrs. Leivers.
+
+He crouched down and carefully put his finger through the
+thorns into the round door of the nest.
+
+"It's almost as if you were feeling inside the live body
+of the bird," he said, "it's so warm.  They say a bird makes
+its nest round like a cup with pressing its breast on it. 
+Then how did it make the ceiling round, I wonder?"
+
+The nest seemed to start into life for the two women. 
+After that, Miriam came to see it every day.  It seemed so close
+to her.  Again, going down the hedgeside with the girl, he noticed
+the celandines, scalloped splashes of gold, on the side of the ditch.
+
+"I like them," he said, "when their petals go flat back with
+the sunshine.  They seemed to be pressing themselves at the sun."
+
+And then the celandines ever after drew her with a little spell. 
+Anthropomorphic as she was, she stimulated him into appreciating
+things thus, and then they lived for her.  She seemed to need things
+kindling in her imagination or in her soul before she felt she
+had them.  And she was cut off from ordinary life by her religious
+intensity which made the world for her either a nunnery garden
+or a paradise, where sin and knowledge were not, or else an ugly,
+cruel thing.
+
+So it was in this atmosphere of subtle intimacy, this meeting
+in their common feeling for something in Nature, that their love started.
+
+Personally, he was a long time before he realized her. 
+For ten months he had to stay at home after his illness.  For a
+while he went to Skegness with his mother, and was perfectly happy. 
+But even from the seaside he wrote long letters to Mrs. Leivers
+about the shore and the sea.  And he brought back his beloved
+sketches of the flat Lincoln coast, anxious for them to see. 
+Almost they would interest the Leivers more than they interested
+his mother.  It was not his art Mrs. Morel cared about; it was himself
+and his achievement.  But Mrs. Leivers and her children were almost
+his disciples.  They kindled him and made him glow to his work,
+whereas his mother's influence was to make him quietly determined,
+patient, dogged, unwearied.
+
+He soon was friends with the boys, whose rudeness was
+only superficial.  They had all, when they could trust themselves,
+a strange gentleness and lovableness.
+
+"Will you come with me on to the fallow?" asked Edgar,
+rather hesitatingly.
+
+Paul went joyfully, and spent the afternoon helping to hoe or to
+single turnips with his friend.  He used to lie with the three brothers
+in the hay piled up in the barn and tell them about Nottingham and
+about Jordan's. In return, they taught him to milk, and let him do
+little jobs--chopping hay or pulping turnips--just as much as he liked. 
+At midsummer he worked all through hay-harvest with them, and then
+he loved them.  The family was so cut off from the world actually. 
+They seemed, somehow, like "les derniers fils d'une race epuisee".
+Though the lads were strong and healthy, yet they had all that
+over-sensitiveness and hanging-back which made them so lonely,
+yet also such close, delicate friends once their intimacy was won. 
+Paul loved them dearly, and they him.
+
+Miriam came later.  But he had come into her life before she
+made any mark on his.  One dull afternoon, when the men were on
+the land and the rest at school, only Miriam and her mother
+at home, the girl said to him, after having hesitated for some time:
+
+"Have you seen the swing?"
+
+"No," he answered.  "Where?"
+
+"In the cowshed," she replied.
+
+She always hesitated to offer or to show him anything. 
+Men have such different standards of worth from women, and her dear
+things--the valuable things to her--her brothers had so often mocked
+or flouted.
+
+"Come on, then," he replied, jumping up.
+
+There were two cowsheds, one on either side of the barn. 
+In the lower, darker shed there was standing for four cows. 
+Hens flew scolding over the manger-wall as the youth and girl went
+forward for the great thick rope which hung from the beam in the
+darkness overhead, and was pushed back over a peg in the wall.
+
+"It's something like a rope!" he exclaimed appreciatively;
+and he sat down on it, anxious to try it.  Then immediately he rose.
+
+"Come on, then, and have first go," he said to the girl.
+
+"See," she answered, going into the barn, "we put some bags
+on the seat"; and she made the swing comfortable for him. 
+That gave her pleasure.  He held the rope.
+
+"Come on, then," he said to her.
+
+"No, I won't go first," she answered.
+
+She stood aside in her still, aloof fashion.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You go," she pleaded.
+
+Almost for the first time in her life she had the pleasure
+of giving up to a man, of spoiling him.  Paul looked at her.
+
+"All right," he said, sitting down.  "Mind out!"
+
+He set off with a spring, and in a moment was flying through
+the air, almost out of the door of the shed, the upper half of which
+was open, showing outside the drizzling rain, the filthy yard,
+the cattle standing disconsolate against the black cartshed, and at
+the back of all the grey-green wall of the wood.  She stood below
+in her crimson tam-o'-shanter and watched.  He looked down at her,
+and she saw his blue eyes sparkling.
+
+"It's a treat of a swing," he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He was swinging through the air, every bit of him swinging,
+like a bird that swoops for joy of movement.  And he looked down
+at her.  Her crimson cap hung over her dark curls, her beautiful
+warm face, so still in a kind of brooding, was lifted towards him. 
+It was dark and rather cold in the shed.  Suddenly a swallow came
+down from the high roof and darted out of the door.
+
+"I didn't know a bird was watching," he called.
+
+He swung negligently.  She could feel him falling and lifting
+through the air, as if he were lying on some force.
+
+"Now I'll die," he said, in a detached, dreamy voice, as though
+he were the dying motion of the swing.  She watched him, fascinated. 
+Suddenly he put on the brake and jumped out.
+
+"I've had a long turn," he said.  "But it's a treat
+of a swing--it's a real treat of a swing!"
+
+Miriam was amused that he took a swing so seriously and felt
+so warmly over it.
+
+"No; you go on," she said.
+
+"Why, don't you want one?" he asked, astonished.
+
+"Well, not much.  I'll have just a little."
+
+She sat down, whilst he kept the bags in place for her.
+
+"It's so ripping!" he said, setting her in motion.  "Keep your
+heels up, or they'll bang the manger wall."
+
+She felt the accuracy with which he caught her, exactly at the
+right moment, and the exactly proportionate strength of his thrust,
+and she was afraid.  Down to her bowels went the hot wave of fear. 
+She was in his hands.  Again, firm and inevitable came the thrust at
+the right moment.  She gripped the rope, almost swooning.
+
+"Ha!" she laughed in fear.  "No higher!"
+
+"But you're not a BIT high," he remonstrated.
+
+"But no higher."
+
+He heard the fear in her voice, and desisted.  Her heart melted
+in hot pain when the moment came for him to thrust her forward again. 
+But he left her alone.  She began to breathe.
+
+"Won't you really go any farther?" he asked.  "Should I keep
+you there?"
+
+"No; let me go by myself," she answered.
+
+He moved aside and watched her.
+
+"Why, you're scarcely moving," he said.
+
+She laughed slightly with shame, and in a moment got down.
+
+"They say if you can swing you won't be sea-sick," he said,
+as he mounted again.  "I don't believe I should ever be sea-sick."
+
+Away he went.  There was something fascinating to her in him. 
+For the moment he was nothing but a piece of swinging stuff;
+not a particle of him that did not swing.  She could never lose
+herself so, nor could her brothers.  It roused a warmth in her. 
+It was almost as if he were a flame that had lit a warmth in her
+whilst he swung in the middle air.
+
+And gradually the intimacy with the family concentrated
+for Paul on three persons--the mother, Edgar, and Miriam. 
+To the mother he went for that sympathy and that appeal which seemed
+to draw him out.  Edgar was his very close friend.  And to Miriam
+he more or less condescended, because she seemed so humble.
+
+But the girl gradually sought him out.  If he brought up his
+sketch-book, it was she who pondered longest over the last picture. 
+Then she would look up at him.  Suddenly, her dark eyes alight like
+water that shakes with a stream of gold in the dark, she would ask:
+
+"Why do I like this so?"
+
+Always something in his breast shrank from these close,
+intimate, dazzled looks of hers.
+
+"Why DO you?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know.  It seems so true."
+
+"It's because--it's because there is scarcely any shadow in it;
+it's more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering protoplasm
+in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. 
+That seems dead to me.  Only this shimmeriness is the real living. 
+The shape is a dead crust.  The shimmer is inside really."
+
+And she, with her little finger in her mouth, would ponder
+these sayings.  They gave her a feeling of life again, and vivified
+things which had meant nothing to her.  She managed to find some
+meaning in his struggling, abstract speeches.  And they were
+the medium through which she came distinctly at her beloved objects.
+
+Another day she sat at sunset whilst he was painting some
+pine-trees which caught the red glare from the west.  He had been quiet.
+
+"There you are!" he said suddenly.  "I wanted that.  Now, look at
+them and tell me, are they pine trunks or are they red coals,
+standing-up pieces of fire in that darkness?  There's God's burning
+bush for you, that burned not away."
+
+Miriam looked, and was frightened.  But the pine trunks were
+wonderful to her, and distinct.  He packed his box and rose. 
+Suddenly he looked at her.
+
+"Why are you always sad?" he asked her.
+
+"Sad!" she exclaimed, looking up at him with startled,
+wonderful brown eyes.
+
+"Yes," he replied.  "You are always sad."
+
+"I am not--oh, not a bit!" she cried.
+
+"But even your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness,"
+he persisted.  "You're never jolly, or even just all right."
+
+"No," she pondered.  "I wonder--why?"
+
+"Because you're not; because you're different inside,
+like a pine-tree, and then you flare up; but you're not just
+like an ordinary tree, with fidgety leaves and jolly---"
+
+He got tangled up in his own speech; but she brooded on it,
+and he had a strange, roused sensation, as if his feelings were new. 
+She got so near him.  It was a strange stimulant.
+
+Then sometimes he hated her.  Her youngest brother was only five. 
+He was a frail lad, with immense brown eyes in his quaint fragile
+face--one of Reynolds's "Choir of Angels", with a touch of elf. 
+Often Miriam kneeled to the child and drew him to her.
+
+"Eh, my Hubert!" she sang, in a voice heavy and surcharged
+with love.  "Eh, my Hubert!"
+
+And, folding him in her arms, she swayed slightly from side
+to side with love, her face half lifted, her eyes half closed,
+her voice drenched with love.
+
+"Don't!" said the child, uneasy--"don't, Miriam!"
+
+"Yes; you love me, don't you?" she murmured deep in her throat,
+almost as if she were in a trance, and swaying also as if she were
+swooned in an ecstasy of love.
+
+"Don't!" repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow.
+
+"You love me, don't you?" she murmured.
+
+"What do you make such a FUSS for?" cried Paul, all in suffering
+because of her extreme emotion.  "Why can't you be ordinary with him?"
+
+She let the child go, and rose, and said nothing.  Her intensity,
+which would leave no emotion on a normal plane, irritated the youth
+into a frenzy.  And this fearful, naked contact of her on small
+occasions shocked him.  He was used to his mother's reserve. 
+And on such occasions he was thankful in his heart and soul that he
+had his mother, so sane and wholesome.
+
+All the life of Miriam's body was in her eyes, which were usually
+dark as a dark church, but could flame with light like a conflagration. 
+Her face scarcely ever altered from its look of brooding. 
+She might have been one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus
+was dead.  Her body was not flexible and living.  She walked
+with a swing, rather heavily, her head bowed forward, pondering. 
+She was not clumsy, and yet none of her movements seemed quite
+THE movement.  Often, when wiping the dishes, she would stand
+in bewilderment and chagrin because she had pulled in two halves
+a cup or a tumbler.  It was as if, in her fear and self-mistrust,
+she put too much strength into the effort.  There was no looseness
+or abandon about her.  Everything was gripped stiff with intensity,
+and her effort, overcharged, closed in on itself.
+
+She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense walk. 
+Occasionally she ran with Paul down the fields.  Then her eyes
+blazed naked in a kind of ecstasy that frightened him.  But she was
+physically afraid.  If she were getting over a stile, she gripped his
+hands in a little hard anguish, and began to lose her presence of mind. 
+And he could not persuade her to jump from even a small height. 
+Her eyes dilated, became exposed and palpitating.
+
+"No!" she cried, half laughing in terror--"no!"
+
+"You shall!" he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he brought
+her falling from the fence.  But her wild "Ah!" of pain, as if she
+were losing consciousness, cut him.  She landed on her feet safely,
+and afterwards had courage in this respect.
+
+She was very much dissatisfied with her lot.
+
+"Don't you like being at home?"  Paul asked her, surprised.
+
+"Who would?" she answered, low and intense.  "What is it? 
+I'm all day cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five minutes. 
+I don't WANT to be at home."
+
+"What do you want, then?"
+
+"I want to do something.  I want a chance like anybody else. 
+Why should 1, because I'm a girl, be kept at home and not allowed
+to be anything?  What chance HAVE I?"
+
+"Chance of what?"
+
+"Of knowing anything--of learning, of doing anything. 
+It's not fair, because I'm a woman."
+
+She seemed very bitter.  Paul wondered.  In his own home Annie
+was almost glad to be a girl.  She had not so much responsibility;
+things were lighter for her.  She never wanted to be other than a girl. 
+But Miriam almost fiercely wished she were a man.  And yet she hated
+men at the same time.
+
+"But it's as well to be a woman as a man," he said, frowning.
+
+"Ha! Is it?  Men have everything."
+
+"I should think women ought to be as glad to be women as men
+are to be men," he answered.
+
+"No!"--she shook her head--"no! Everything the men have."
+
+"But what do you want?" he asked.
+
+"I want to learn.  Why SHOULD it be that I know nothing?"
+
+"What! such as mathematics and French?"
+
+"Why SHOULDN'T I know mathematics?  Yes!" she cried, her eye
+expanding in a kind of defiance.
+
+"Well, you can learn as much as I know," he said.  "I'll teach you,
+if you like."
+
+Her eyes dilated.  She mistrusted him as teacher.
+
+"Would you?" he asked.
+
+Her head had dropped, and she was sucking her finger broodingly.
+
+"Yes," she said hesitatingly.
+
+He used to tell his mother all these things.
+
+"I'm going to teach Miriam algebra," he said.
+
+"Well," replied Mrs. Morel, "I hope she'll get fat on it."
+
+When he went up to the farm on the Monday evening, it was
+drawing twilight.  Miriam was just sweeping up the kitchen, and was
+kneeling at the hearth when he entered.  Everyone was out but her. 
+She looked round at him, flushed, her dark eyes shining, her fine
+hair falling about her face.
+
+"Hello!" she said, soft and musical.  "I knew it was you."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I knew your step.  Nobody treads so quick and firm."
+
+He sat down, sighing.
+
+"Ready to do some algebra?" he asked, drawing a little book
+from his pocket.
+
+"But---"
+
+He could feel her backing away.
+
+"You said you wanted," he insisted.
+
+"To-night, though?" she faltered.
+
+"But I came on purpose.  And if you want to learn it,
+you must begin."
+
+She took up her ashes in the dustpan and looked at him,
+half tremulously, laughing.
+
+"Yes, but to-night! You see, I haven't thought of it."
+
+"Well, my goodness!  Take the ashes and come."
+
+He went and sat on the stone bench in the back-yard, where
+the big milk-cans were standing, tipped up, to air.  The men were
+in the cowsheds.  He could hear the little sing-song of the milk
+spurting into the pails.  Presently she came, bringing some big
+greenish apples.
+
+"You know you like them," she said.
+
+He took a bite.
+
+"Sit down," he said, with his mouth full.
+
+She was short-sighted, and peered over his shoulder. 
+It irritated him.  He gave her the book quickly.
+
+"Here," he said.  "It's only letters for figures.  You put
+down 'a' instead of '2' or '6'."
+
+They worked, he talking, she with her head down on the book. 
+He was quick and hasty.  She never answered.  Occasionally, when he
+demanded of her, "Do you see?" she looked up at him, her eyes wide
+with the half-laugh that comes of fear.  "Don't you?" he cried.
+
+He had been too fast.  But she said nothing.  He questioned
+her more, then got hot.  It made his blood rouse to see her there,
+as it were, at his mercy, her mouth open, her eyes dilated with
+laughter that was afraid, apologetic, ashamed.  Then Edgar came
+along with two buckets of milk.
+
+"Hello!" he said.  "What are you doing?"
+
+"Algebra," replied Paul.
+
+"Algebra!" repeated Edgar curiously.  Then he passed on with
+a laugh.  Paul took a bite at his forgotten apple, looked at the
+miserable cabbages in the garden, pecked into lace by the fowls,
+and he wanted to pull them up.  Then he glanced at Miriam. 
+She was poring over the book, seemed absorbed in it, yet trembling
+lest she could not get at it.  It made him cross.  She was ruddy
+and beautiful.  Yet her soul seemed to be intensely supplicating. 
+The algebra-book she closed, shrinking, knowing he was angered;
+and at the same instant he grew gentle, seeing her hurt because she did
+not understand.
+
+But things came slowly to her.  And when she held herself
+in a grip, seemed so utterly humble before the lesson, it made his
+blood rouse.  He stormed at her, got ashamed, continued the lesson,
+and grew furious again, abusing her.  She listened in silence. 
+Occasionally, very rarely, she defended herself.  Her liquid dark
+eyes blazed at him.
+
+"You don't give me time to learn it," she said.
+
+"All right," he answered, throwing the book on the table and lighting
+a cigarette.  Then, after a while, he went back to her repentant. 
+So the lessons went.  He was always either in a rage or very gentle.
+
+"What do you tremble your SOUL before it for?" he cried. 
+"You don't learn algebra with your blessed soul.  Can't you look
+at it with your clear simple wits?"
+
+Often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would
+look at him reproachfully, saying:
+
+"Paul, don't be so hard on Miriam.  She may not be quick,
+but I'm sure she tries."
+
+"I can't help it," he said rather pitiably.  "I go off like it."
+
+"You don't mind me, Miriam, do you?" he asked of the girl later.
+
+"No," she reassured him in her beautiful deep tones--"no, I
+don't mind."
+
+"Don't mind me; it's my fault."
+
+But, in spite of himself, his blood began to boil with her. 
+It was strange that no one else made him in such fury. 
+He flared against her.  Once he threw the pencil in her face. 
+There was a silence.  She turned her face slightly aside.
+
+"I didn't---" he began, but got no farther, feeling weak in
+all his bones.  She never reproached him or was angry with him. 
+He was often cruelly ashamed.  But still again his anger burst
+like a bubble surcharged; and still, when he saw her eager, silent,
+as it were, blind face, he felt he wanted to throw the pencil
+in it; and still, when he saw her hand trembling and her mouth
+parted with suffering, his heart was scalded with pain for her. 
+And because of the intensity to which she roused him, he sought her.
+
+Then he often avoided her and went with Edgar.  Miriam and
+her brother were naturally antagonistic.  Edgar was a rationalist,
+who was curious, and had a sort of scientific interest in life. 
+It was a great bitterness to Miriam to see herself deserted by Paul
+for Edgar, who seemed so much lower.  But the youth was very happy
+with her elder brother.  The two men spent afternoons together
+on the land or in the loft doing carpentry, when it rained. 
+And they talked together, or Paul taught Edgar the songs he himself
+had learned from Annie at the piano.  And often all the men,
+Mr. Leivers as well, had bitter debates on the nationalizing of the land
+and similar problems.  Paul had already heard his mother's views,
+and as these were as yet his own, he argued for her.  Miriam attended
+and took part, but was all the time waiting until it should be over
+and a personal communication might begin.
+
+"After all," she said within herself, "if the land
+were nationalized, Edgar and Paul and I would be just the same." 
+So she waited for the youth to come back to her.
+
+He was studying for his painting.  He loved to sit at home,
+alone with his mother, at night, working and working.  She sewed
+or read.  Then, looking up from his task, he would rest his eyes
+for a moment on her face, that was bright with living warmth,
+and he returned gladly to his work.
+
+"I can do my best things when you sit there in your
+rocking-chair, mother," he said.
+
+"I'm sure!" she exclaimed, sniffing with mock scepticism. 
+But she felt it was so, and her heart quivered with brightness. 
+For many hours she sat still, slightly conscious of him labouring away,
+whilst she worked or read her book.  And he, with all his soul's
+intensity directing his pencil, could feel her warmth inside him
+like strength.  They were both very happy so, and both unconscious
+of it.  These times, that meant so much, and which were real living,
+they almost ignored.
+
+He was conscious only when stimulated.  A sketch finished,
+he always wanted to take it to Miriam.  Then he was stimulated
+into knowledge of the work he had produced unconsciously. 
+In contact with Miriam he gained insight; his vision went deeper. 
+From his mother he drew the life-warmth, the strength to produce;
+Miriam urged this warmth into intensity like a white light.
+
+When he returned to the factory the conditions of work were better. 
+He had Wednesday afternoon off to go to the Art School--
+Miss Jordan's provision--returning in the evening.  Then the factory
+closed at six instead of eight on Thursday and Friday evenings.
+
+One evening in the summer Miriam and he went over the fields
+by Herod's Farm on their way from the library home.  So it was
+only three miles to Willey Farm.  There was a yellow glow over the
+mowing-grass, and the sorrel-heads burned crimson.  Gradually, as they
+walked along the high land, the gold in the west sank down to red,
+the red to crimson, and then the chill blue crept up against the glow.
+
+They came out upon the high road to Alfreton, which ran
+white between the darkening fields.  There Paul hesitated. 
+It was two miles home for him, one mile forward for Miriam. 
+They both looked up the road that ran in shadow right under the
+glow of the north-west sky.  On the crest of the hill, Selby,
+with its stark houses and the up-pricked headstocks of the pit,
+stood in black silhouette small against the sky.
+
+He looked at his watch.
+
+"Nine o'clock!" he said.
+
+The pair stood, loth to part, hugging their books.
+
+"The wood is so lovely now," she said.  "I wanted you to see it."
+
+He followed her slowly across the road to the white gate.
+
+"They grumble so if I'm late," he said.
+
+"But you're not doing anything wrong," she answered impatiently.
+
+He followed her across the nibbled pasture in the dusk. 
+There was a coolness in the wood, a scent of leaves, of honeysuckle,
+and a twilight.  The two walked in silence.  Night came wonderfully there,
+among the throng of dark tree-trunks. He looked round, expectant.
+
+She wanted to show him a certain wild-rose bush she
+had discovered.  She knew it was wonderful.  And yet,
+till he had seen it, she felt it had not come into her soul. 
+Only he could make it her own, immortal.  She was dissatisfied.
+
+Dew was already on the paths.  In the old oak-wood a mist
+was rising, and he hesitated, wondering whether one whiteness
+were a strand of fog or only campion-flowers pallid in a cloud. 
+
+By the time they came to the pine-trees Miriam was getting very
+eager and very tense.  Her bush might be gone.  She might not be
+able to find it; and she wanted it so much.  Almost passionately
+she wanted to be with him when be stood before the flowers. 
+They were going to have a communion together--something that
+thrilled her, something holy.  He was walking beside her in silence. 
+They were very near to each other.  She trembled, and he listened,
+vaguely anxious.
+
+Coming to the edge of the wood, they saw the sky in front,
+like mother-of-pearl, and the earth growing dark.  Somewhere on the
+outermost branches of the pine-wood the honeysuckle was streaming scent.
+
+"Where?" he asked.
+
+"Down the middle path," she murmured, quivering.
+
+When they turned the corner of the path she stood still. 
+In the wide walk between the pines, gazing rather frightened,
+she could distinguish nothing for some moments; the greying light
+robbed things of their colour.  Then she saw her bush.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, hastening forward.
+
+It was very still.  The tree was tall and straggling. 
+It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long
+streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the
+darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white.  In bosses
+of ivory and in large splashed stars the roses gleamed on the
+darkness of foliage and stems and grass.  Paul and Miriam stood
+close together, silent, and watched.  Point after point the steady
+roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle something in their souls. 
+The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.
+
+Paul looked into Miriam's eyes.  She was pale and expectant
+with wonder, her lips were parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him. 
+His look seemed to travel down into her.  Her soul quivered. 
+It was the communion she wanted.  He turned aside, as if pained. 
+He turned to the bush.
+
+"They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shake themselves,"
+he said.
+
+She looked at her roses.  They were white, some incurved and holy,
+others expanded in an ecstasy.  The tree was dark as a shadow. 
+She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward
+and touched them in worship.
+
+"Let us go," he said.
+
+There was a cool scent of ivory roses--a white, virgin scent. 
+Something made him feel anxious and imprisoned.  The two walked
+in silence.
+
+"Till Sunday," he said quietly, and left her; and she walked
+home slowly, feeling her soul satisfied with the holiness of the night. 
+He stumbled down the path.  And as soon as he was out of the wood,
+in the free open meadow, where he could breathe, he started to run
+as fast as he could.  It was like a delicious delirium in his veins.
+
+Always when he went with Miriam, and it grew rather late, he knew
+his mother was fretting and getting angry about him--why, he could
+not understand.  As he went into the house, flinging down his cap,
+his mother looked up at the clock.  She had been sitting thinking,
+because a chill to her eyes prevented her reading.  She could feel
+Paul being drawn away by this girl.  And she did not care for Miriam. 
+"She is one of those who will want to suck a man's soul out till
+he has none of his own left," she said to herself; "and he is just
+such a gaby as to let himself be absorbed.  She will never let him
+become a man; she never will."  So, while he was away with Miriam,
+Mrs. Morel grew more and more worked up.
+
+She glanced at the clock and said, coldly and rather tired:
+
+"You have been far enough to-night."
+
+His soul, warm and exposed from contact with the girl, shrank.
+
+"You must have been right home with her," his mother continued.
+
+He would not answer.  Mrs. Morel, looking at him quickly,
+saw his hair was damp on his forehead with haste, saw him frowning
+in his heavy fashion, resentfully.
+
+"She must be wonderfully fascinating, that you can't get away
+from her, but must go trailing eight miles at this time of night."
+
+He was hurt between the past glamour with Miriam and the
+knowledge that his mother fretted.  He had meant not to say anything,
+to refuse to answer.  But he could not harden his heart to ignore
+his mother.
+
+"I DO like to talk to her," he answered irritably.
+
+"Is there nobody else to talk to?"
+
+"You wouldn't say anything if I went with Edgar."
+
+"You know I should.  You know, whoever you went with,
+I should say it was too far for you to go trailing, late at night,
+when you've been to Nottingham.  Besides"--her voice suddenly flashed
+into anger and contempt--"it is disgusting--bits
+of lads and girls courting."
+
+"It is NOT courting," he cried.
+
+"I don't know what else you call it."
+
+"It's not!  Do you think we SPOON and do?  We only talk."
+
+"Till goodness knows what time and distance," was the
+sarcastic rejoinder.
+
+Paul snapped at the laces of his boots angrily.
+
+"What are you so mad about?" he asked.  "Because you don't
+like her."
+
+"I don't say I don't like her.  But I don't hold with children
+keeping company, and never did."
+
+"But you don't mind our Annie going out with Jim Inger."
+
+"They've more sense than you two."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Our Annie's not one of the deep sort."
+
+He failed to see the meaning of this remark.  But his mother
+looked tired.  She was never so strong after William's death;
+and her eyes hurt her.
+
+"Well," he said, "it's so pretty in the country.  Mr. Sleath
+asked about you.  He said he'd missed you.  Are you a bit better?" 
+
+"I ought to have been in bed a long time ago," she replied.
+
+"Why, mother, you know you wouldn't have gone before
+quarter-past ten."
+
+"Oh, yes, I should!"
+
+"Oh, little woman, you'd say anything now you're disagreeable
+with me, wouldn't you?"
+
+He kissed her forehead that he knew so well:  the deep marks
+between the brows, the rising of the fine hair, greying now, and the
+proud setting of the temples.  His hand lingered on her shoulder
+after his kiss.  Then he went slowly to bed.  He had forgotten Miriam;
+he only saw how his mother's hair was lifted back from her warm,
+broad brow.  And somehow, she was hurt.
+
+Then the next time he saw Miriam he said to her:
+
+"Don't let me be late to-night--not later than ten o'clock.  My
+mother gets so upset."
+
+Miriam dropped her bead, brooding.
+
+"Why does she get upset?" she asked.
+
+"Because she says I oughtn't to be out late when I have to get
+up early."
+
+"Very well!" said Miriam, rather quietly, with just a touch
+of a sneer.
+
+He resented that.  And he was usually late again.
+
+That there was any love growing between him and Miriam neither
+of them would have acknowledged.  He thought he was too sane for
+such sentimentality, and she thought herself too lofty.  They both were
+late in coming to maturity, and psychical ripeness was much behind
+even the physical.  Miriam was exceedingly sensitive, as her mother
+had always been.  The slightest grossness made her recoil almost
+in anguish.  Her brothers were brutal, but never coarse in speech. 
+The men did all the discussing of farm matters outside.  But, perhaps,
+because of the continual business of birth and of begetting which goes
+on upon every farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter,
+and her blood was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest
+suggestion of such intercourse.  Paul took his pitch from her,
+and their intimacy went on in an utterly blanched and chaste fashion. 
+It could never be mentioned that the mare was in foal.
+
+When he was nineteen, he was earning only twenty shillings a week,
+but he was happy.  His painting went well, and life went well enough. 
+On the Good Friday he organised a walk to the Hemlock Stone. 
+There were three lads of his own age, then Annie and Arthur,
+Miriam and Geoffrey.  Arthur, apprenticed as an electrician
+in Nottingham, was home for the holiday.  Morel, as usual, was up early,
+whistling and sawing in the yard.  At seven o'clock the family heard
+him buy threepennyworth of hot-cross buns; he talked with gusto
+to the little girl who brought them, calling her "my darling".  He
+turned away several boys who came with more buns, telling them
+they had been "kested" by a little lass.  Then Mrs. Morel got up,
+and the family straggled down.  It was an immense luxury to everybody,
+this lying in bed just beyond the ordinary time on a weekday. 
+And Paul and Arthur read before breakfast, and had the meal unwashed,
+sitting in their shirt-sleeves. This was another holiday luxury. 
+The room was warm.  Everything felt free of care and anxiety. 
+There was a sense of plenty in the house.
+
+While the boys were reading, Mrs. Morel went into the garden. 
+They were now in another house, an old one, near the Scargill
+Street home, which had been left soon after William had died.
+Directly came an excited cry from the garden:
+
+"Paul!  Paul!  come and look!"
+
+It was his mother's voice.  He threw down his book and went out. 
+There was a long garden that ran to a field.  It was a grey, cold day,
+with a sharp wind blowing out of Derbyshire.  Two fields away
+Bestwood began, with a jumble of roofs and red house-ends, out of which
+rose the church tower and the spire of the Congregational Chapel. 
+And beyond went woods and hills, right away to the pale grey heights
+of the Pennine Chain.
+
+Paul looked down the garden for his mother.  Her head appeared
+among the young currant-bushes.
+
+"Come here!" she cried.
+
+"What for?" he answered.
+
+"Come and see."
+
+She had been looking at the buds on the currant trees. 
+Paul went up.
+
+"To think," she said, "that here I might never have seen them!"
+
+Her son went to her side.  Under the fence, in a little bed,
+was a ravel of poor grassy leaves, such as come from very immature bulbs,
+and three scyllas in bloom.  Mrs. Morel pointed to the deep blue flowers.
+
+
+"Now, just see those!" she exclaimed.  "I was looking at
+the currant bushes, when, thinks I to myself, 'There's something
+very blue; is it a bit of sugar-bag?' and there, behold you! 
+Sugar-bag! Three glories of the snow, and such beauties! 
+But where on earth did they come from?"
+
+"I don't know," said Paul.
+
+"Well, that's a marvel, now!  I THOUGHT I knew every weed
+and blade in this garden.  But HAVEN'T they done well?  You see,
+that gooseberry-bush just shelters them.  Not nipped, not touched!"
+
+He crouched down and turned up the bells of the little
+blue flowers.
+
+"They're a glorious colour!" he said.
+
+"Aren't they!" she cried.  "I guess they come from Switzerland,
+where they say they have such lovely things.  Fancy them against
+the snow!  But where have they come from?  They can't have BLOWN here,
+can they?"
+
+Then he remembered having set here a lot of little trash
+of bulbs to mature.
+
+"And you never told me," she said.
+
+"No!  I thought I'd leave it till they might flower."
+
+"And now, you see!  I might have missed them.  And I've never
+had a glory of the snow in my garden in my life."
+
+She was full of excitement and elation.  The garden was
+an endless joy to her.  Paul was thankful for her sake at last
+to be in a house with a long garden that went down to a field. 
+Every morning after breakfast she went out and was happy pottering
+about in it.  And it was true, she knew every weed and blade.
+
+Everybody turned up for the walk.  Food was packed, and they
+set off, a merry, delighted party.  They hung over the wall of the
+mill-race, dropped paper in the water on one side of the tunnel
+and watched it shoot out on the other.  They stood on the foot-bridge
+over Boathouse Station and looked at the metals gleaming coldly.
+
+"You should see the Flying Scotsman come through at half-past six!"
+said Leonard, whose father was a signalman.  "Lad, but she doesn't
+half buzz!" and the little party looked up the lines one way,
+to London, and the other way, to Scotland, and they felt the touch
+of these two magical places.
+
+In Ilkeston the colliers were waiting in gangs for the
+public-houses to open.  It was a town of idleness and lounging. 
+At Stanton Gate the iron foundry blazed.  Over everything there were
+great discussions.  At Trowell they crossed again from Derbyshire
+into Nottinghamshire.  They came to the Hemlock Stone at dinner-time.
+Its field was crowded with folk from Nottingham and Ilkeston.
+
+They had expected a venerable and dignified monument. 
+They found a little, gnarled, twisted stump of rock, something like a
+decayed mushroom, standing out pathetically on the side of a field. 
+Leonard and Dick immediately proceeded to carve their initials,
+"L. W." and "R. P.", in the old red sandstone; but Paul desisted,
+because he had read in the newspaper satirical remarks about
+initial-carvers, who could find no other road to immortality. 
+Then all the lads climbed to the top of the rock to look round.
+
+Everywhere in the field below, factory girls and lads were eating
+lunch or sporting about.  Beyond was the garden of an old manor.
+It had yew-hedges and thick clumps and borders
+of yellow crocuses round the lawn.
+
+"See," said Paul to Miriam, "what a quiet garden!"
+
+She saw the dark yews and the golden crocuses, then she
+looked gratefully.  He had not seemed to belong to her among all
+these others; he was different then--not her Paul, who understood
+the slightest quiver of her innermost soul, but something else,
+speaking another language than hers.  How it hurt her, and deadened
+her very perceptions.  Only when he came right back to her,
+leaving his other, his lesser self, as she thought, would she
+feel alive again.  And now he asked her to look at this garden,
+wanting the contact with her again.  Impatient of the set in the field,
+she turned to the quiet lawn, surrounded by sheaves of shut-up crocuses. 
+A feeling of stillness, almost of ecstasy, came over her. 
+It felt almost as if she were alone with him in this garden.
+
+Then he left her again and joined the others.  Soon they
+started home.  Miriam loitered behind, alone.  She did not
+fit in with the others; she could very rarely get into human
+relations with anyone:  so her friend, her companion, her lover,
+was Nature.  She saw the sun declining wanly.  In the dusky,
+cold hedgerows were some red leaves.  She lingered to gather them,
+tenderly, passionately.  The love in her finger-tips caressed
+the leaves; the passion in her heart came to a glow upon the leaves.
+
+Suddenly she realised she was alone in a strange road,
+and she hurried forward.  Turning a corner in the lane, she came
+upon Paul, who stood bent over something, his mind fixed on it,
+working away steadily, patiently, a little hopelessly.  She hesitated
+in her approach, to watch.
+
+He remained concentrated in the middle of the road.  Beyond,
+one rift of rich gold in that colourless grey evening seemed to make
+him stand out in dark relief.  She saw him, slender and firm,
+as if the setting sun had given him to her.  A deep pain took hold
+of her, and she knew she must love him.  And she had discovered him,
+discovered in him a rare potentiality, discovered his loneliness. 
+Quivering as at some "annunciation", she went slowly forward.
+
+At last he looked up.
+
+"Why," he exclaimed gratefully, "have you waited for me!"
+
+She saw a deep shadow in his eyes.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"The spring broken here;" and he showed her where his umbrella
+was injured.
+
+Instantly, with some shame, she knew he had not done
+the damage himself, but that Geoffrey was responsible.
+
+"It is only an old umbrella, isn't it?" she asked.
+
+She wondered why he, who did not usually trouble over trifles,
+made such a mountain of this molehill.
+
+"But it was William's an' my mother can't help but know,"
+he said quietly, still patiently working at the umbrella.
+
+The words went through Miriam like a blade.  This, then, was the
+confirmation of her vision of him!  She looked at him.  But there
+was about him a certain reserve, and she dared not comfort him,
+not even speak softly to him.
+
+"Come on," he said.  "I can't do it;" and they went in silence
+along the road.
+
+That same evening they were walking along under the trees
+by Nether Green.  He was talking to her fretfully, seemed to be
+struggling to convince himself.
+
+"You know," he said, with an effort, "if one person loves,
+the other does."
+
+"Ah!" she answered.  "Like mother said to me when I was little,
+'Love begets love.'"
+
+"Yes, something like that, I think it MUST be."
+
+"I hope so, because, if it were not, love might be a very
+terrible thing," she said.
+
+"Yes, but it IS--at least with most people," he answered.
+
+And Miriam, thinking he had assured himself, felt strong
+in herself.  She always regarded that sudden coming upon him
+in the lane as a revelation.  And this conversation remained
+graven in her mind as one of the letters of the law.
+
+Now she stood with him and for him.  When, about this time,
+he outraged the family feeling at Willey Farm by some overbearing insult,
+she stuck to him, and believed he was right.  And at this time she
+dreamed dreams of him, vivid, unforgettable.  These dreams came
+again later on, developed to a more subtle psychological stage.
+
+On the Easter Monday the same party took an excursion
+to Wingfield Manor.  It was great excitement to Miriam to catch a
+train at Sethley Bridge, amid all the bustle of the Bank Holiday crowd. 
+They left the train at Alfreton.  Paul was interested in the
+street and in the colliers with their dogs.  Here was a new race
+of miners.  Miriam did not live till they came to the church. 
+They were all rather timid of entering, with their bags of food,
+for fear of being turned out.  Leonard, a comic, thin fellow,
+went first; Paul, who would have died rather than be sent back,
+went last.  The place was decorated for Easter.  In the font hundreds
+of white narcissi seemed to be growing.  The air was dim and coloured
+from the windows and thrilled with a subtle scent of lilies
+and narcissi.  In that atmosphere Miriam's soul came into a glow. 
+Paul was afraid of the things he mustn't do; and he was sensitive
+to the feel of the place.  Miriam turned to him.  He answered. 
+They were together.  He would not go beyond the Communion-rail. She
+loved him for that.  Her soul expanded into prayer beside him. 
+He felt the strange fascination of shadowy religious places. 
+All his latent mysticism quivered into life.  She was drawn to him. 
+He was a prayer along with her.
+
+Miriam very rarely talked to the other lads.  They at once
+became awkward in conversation with her.  So usually she was silent.
+
+It was past midday when they climbed the steep path to the manor. 
+All things shone softly in the sun, which was wonderfully warm
+and enlivening.  Celandines and violets were out.  Everybody was
+tip-top full with happiness.  The glitter of the ivy, the soft,
+atmospheric grey of the castle walls, the gentleness of everything
+near the ruin, was perfect.
+
+The manor is of hard, pale grey stone, and the other walls
+are blank and calm.  The young folk were in raptures.  They went
+in trepidation, almost afraid that the delight of exploring this
+ruin might be denied them.  In the first courtyard, within the high
+broken walls, were farm-carts, with their shafts lying idle on
+the ground, the tyres of the wheels brilliant with gold-red rust. 
+It was very still.
+
+All eagerly paid their sixpences, and went timidly through
+the fine clean arch of the inner courtyard.  They were shy. 
+Here on the pavement, where the hall had been, an old thorn tree
+was budding.  All kinds of strange openings and broken rooms were
+in the shadow around them.
+
+After lunch they set off once more to explore the ruin. 
+This time the girls went with the boys, who could act as guides
+and expositors.  There was one tall tower in a corner, rather tottering,
+where they say Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned.
+
+"Think of the Queen going up here!" said Miriam in a low voice,
+as she climbed the hollow stairs.
+
+"If she could get up," said Paul, "for she had rheumatism
+like anything.  I reckon they treated her rottenly."
+
+"You don't think she deserved it?" asked Miriam.
+
+"No, I don't. She was only lively."
+
+They continued to mount the winding staircase.  A high wind,
+blowing through the loopholes, went rushing up the shaft,
+and filled the girl's skirts like a balloon, so that she was ashamed,
+until he took the hem of her dress and held it down for her. 
+He did it perfectly simply, as he would have picked up her glove. 
+She remembered this always.
+
+Round the broken top of the tower the ivy bushed out,
+old and handsome.  Also, there were a few chill gillivers,
+in pale cold bud.  Miriam wanted to lean over for some ivy,
+but he would not let her.  Instead, she had to wait behind him,
+and take from him each spray as he gathered it and held it to her,
+each one separately, in the purest manner of chivalry.  The tower
+seemed to rock in the wind.  They looked over miles and miles
+of wooded country, and country with gleams of pasture.
+
+The crypt underneath the manor was beautiful, and in
+perfect preservation.  Paul made a drawing:  Miriam stayed with him. 
+She was thinking of Mary Queen of Scots looking with her strained,
+hopeless eyes, that could not understand misery, over the hills
+whence no help came, or sitting in this crypt, being told of a God
+as cold as the place she sat in.
+
+They set off again gaily, looking round on their beloved manor
+that stood so clean and big on its hill.
+
+"Supposing you could have THAT farm," said Paul to Miriam.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Wouldn't it be lovely to come and see you!"
+
+They were now in the bare country of stone walls, which he loved,
+and which, though only ten miles from home, seemed so foreign
+to Miriam.  The party was straggling.  As they were crossing a
+large meadow that sloped away from the sun, along a path embedded
+with innumerable tiny glittering points, Paul, walking
+alongside, laced his fingers in the strings of the bag Miriam
+was carrying, and instantly she felt Annie behind, watchful and jealous. 
+But the meadow was bathed in a glory of sunshine, and the path
+was jewelled, and it was seldom that he gave her any sign. 
+She held her fingers very still among the strings of the bag,
+his fingers touching; and the place was golden as a vision.
+
+At last they came into the straggling grey village of Crich,
+that lies high.  Beyond the village was the famous Crich Stand
+that Paul could see from the garden at home.  The party pushed on. 
+Great expanse of country spread around and below.  The lads were
+eager to get to the top of the hill.  It was capped by a round knoll,
+half of which was by now cut away, and on the top of which stood
+an ancient monument, sturdy and squat, for signalling in old days far
+down into the level lands of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire.
+
+It was blowing so hard, high up there in the exposed place,
+that the only way to be safe was to stand nailed by the wind
+to the wan of the tower.  At their feet fell the precipice
+where the limestone was quarried away.  Below was a jumble of
+hills and tiny villages--Mattock, Ambergate, Stoney Middleton. 
+The lads were eager to spy out the church of Bestwood, far away
+among the rather crowded country on the left.  They were disgusted
+that it seemed to stand on a plain.  They saw the hills of Derbyshire
+fall into the monotony of the Midlands that swept away South.
+
+Miriam was somewhat scared by the wind, but the lads enjoyed it. 
+They went on, miles and miles, to Whatstandwell.  All the food
+was eaten, everybody was hungry, and there was very little money to get
+home with.  But they managed to procure a loaf and a currant-loaf,
+which they hacked to pieces with shut-knives, and ate sitting on
+the wall near the bridge, watching the bright Derwent rushing by,
+and the brakes from Matlock pulling up at the inn.
+
+Paul was now pale with weariness.  He had been responsible
+for the party all day, and now he was done.  Miriam understood,
+and kept close to him, and he left himself in her hands.
+
+They had an hour to wait at Ambergate Station.  Trains came,
+crowded with excursionists returning to Manchester, Birmingham,
+and London.
+
+"We might be going there--folk easily might think we're going
+that far," said Paul.
+
+They got back rather late.  Miriam, walking home with Geoffrey,
+watched the moon rise big and red and misty.  She felt something
+was fulfilled in her.
+
+She had an elder sister, Agatha, who was a school-teacher.
+Between the two girls was a feud.  Miriam considered Agatha worldly. 
+And she wanted herself to be a school-teacher.
+
+One Saturday afternoon Agatha and Miriam were upstairs dressing. 
+Their bedroom was over the stable.  It was a low room, not very large,
+and bare.  Miriam had nailed on the wall a reproduction of Veronese's
+"St. Catherine".  She loved the woman who sat in the window, dreaming. 
+Her own windows were too small to sit in.  But the front one was
+dripped over with honeysuckle and virginia creeper, and looked
+upon the tree-tops of the oak-wood across the yard, while the
+little back window, no bigger than a handkerchief, was a loophole
+to the east, to the dawn beating up against the beloved round hills.
+
+The two sisters did not talk much to each other.  Agatha,
+who was fair and small and determined, had rebelled against
+the home atmosphere, against the doctrine of "the other cheek".
+She was out in the world now, in a fair way to be independent. 
+And she insisted on worldly values, on appearance, on manners,
+on position, which Miriam would fain have ignored.
+
+Both girls liked to be upstairs, out of the way, when Paul came. 
+They preferred to come running down, open the stair-foot door,
+and see him watching, expectant of them.  Miriam stood painfully
+pulling over her head a rosary he had given her.  It caught
+in the fine mesh of her hair.  But at last she had it on, and the
+red-brown wooden beads looked well against her cool brown neck. 
+She was a well-developed girl, and very handsome.  But in the little
+looking-glass nailed against the whitewashed wall she could only see
+a fragment of herself at a time.  Agatha had bought a little mirror
+of her own, which she propped up to suit herself.  Miriam was near
+the window.  Suddenly she heard the well-known click of the chain,
+and she saw Paul fling open the gate, push his bicycle into the yard. 
+She saw him look at the house, and she shrank away.  He walked
+in a nonchalant fashion, and his bicycle went with him as if it
+were a live thing.
+
+"Paul's come!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Aren't you glad?" said Agatha cuttingly.
+
+Miriam stood still in amazement and bewilderment.
+
+"Well, aren't you?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, but I'm not going to let him see it, and think I wanted him."
+
+Miriam was startled.  She heard him putting his bicycle in the
+stable underneath, and talking to Jimmy, who had been a pit-horse,
+and who was seedy.
+
+"Well, Jimmy my lad, how are ter?  Nobbut sick an'
+sadly, like?  Why, then, it's a shame, my owd lad."
+
+She heard the rope run through the hole as the horse lifted its
+head from the lad's caress.  How she loved to listen when he thought
+only the horse could hear.  But there was a serpent in her Eden. 
+She searched earnestly in herself to see if she wanted Paul Morel. 
+She felt there would be some disgrace in it.  Full of twisted feeling,
+she was afraid she did want him.  She stood self-convicted.  Then
+came an agony of new shame.  She shrank within herself in a coil
+of torture.  Did she want Paul Morel, and did he know she wanted him? 
+What a subtle infamy upon her.  She felt as if her whole soul coiled
+into knots of shame.
+
+Agatha was dressed first, and ran downstairs.  Miriam heard
+her greet the lad gaily, knew exactly how brilliant her grey
+eyes became with that tone.  She herself would have felt it bold
+to have greeted him in such wise.  Yet there she stood under the
+self-accusation of wanting him, tied to that stake of torture. 
+In bitter perplexity she kneeled down and prayed:
+
+"O Lord, let me not love Paul Morel.  Keep me from loving him,
+if I ought not to love him."
+
+Something anomalous in the prayer arrested her.  She lifted
+her head and pondered.  How could it be wrong to love him?  Love was
+God's gift.  And yet it caused her shame.  That was because of him,
+Paul Morel.  But, then, it was not his affair, it was her own,
+between herself and God.  She was to be a sacrifice.  But it was
+God's sacrifice, not Paul Morel's or her own.  After a few minutes
+she hid her face in the pillow again, and said:
+
+"But, Lord, if it is Thy will that I should love him,
+make me love him--as Christ would, who died for the souls of men. 
+Make me love him splendidly, because he is Thy son."
+
+She remained kneeling for some time, quite still, and deeply moved,
+her black hair against the red squares and the lavender-sprigged
+squares of the patchwork quilt.  Prayer was almost essential to her.
+Then she fell into that rapture of self-sacrifice,
+identifying herself with a God who was sacrificed, which gives
+to so many human souls their deepest bliss.
+
+When she went downstairs Paul was lying back in an armchair,
+holding forth with much vehemence to Agatha, who was scorning a little
+painting he had brought to show her.  Miriam glanced at the two,
+and avoided their levity.  She went into the parlour to be alone.
+
+It was tea-time before she was able to speak to Paul, and then
+her manner was so distant he thought he had offended her.
+
+Miriam discontinued her practice of going each Thursday evening
+to the library in Bestwood.  After calling for Paul regularly
+during the whole spring, a number of trifling incidents and tiny
+insults from his family awakened her to their attitude towards her,
+and she decided to go no more.  So she announced to Paul one evening
+she would not call at his house again for him on Thursday nights.
+
+"Why?" he asked, very short.
+
+"Nothing.  Only I'd rather not."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"But," she faltered, "if you'd care to meet me, we could still
+go together."
+
+"Meet you where?"
+
+"Somewhere--where you like."
+
+"I shan't meet you anywhere.  I don't see why you shouldn't
+keep calling for me.  But if you won't, I don't want to meet you."
+
+So the Thursday evenings which had been so precious to her,
+and to him, were dropped.  He worked instead.  Mrs. Morel sniffed
+with satisfaction at this arrangement.
+
+He would not have it that they were lovers.  The intimacy
+between them had been kept so abstract, such a matter of the soul,
+all thought and weary struggle into consciousness, that he saw it only
+as a platonic friendship.  He stoutly denied there was anything else
+between them.  Miriam was silent, or else she very quietly agreed. 
+He was a fool who did not know what was happening to himself. 
+By tacit agreement they ignored the remarks and insinuations of
+their acquaintances.
+
+"We aren't lovers, we are friends," he said to her.  "WE know it. 
+Let them talk.  What does it matter what they say."
+
+Sometimes, as they were walking together, she slipped her arm
+timidly into his.  But he always resented it, and she knew it. 
+It caused a violent conflict in him.  With Miriam he was always
+on the high plane of abstraction, when his natural fire of love was
+transmitted into the fine stream of thought.  She would have it so. 
+If he were jolly and, as she put it, flippant, she waited till he came
+back to her, till the change had taken place in him again, and he
+was wrestling with his own soul, frowning, passionate in his desire
+for understanding.  And in this passion for understanding her soul
+lay close to his; she had him all to herself.  But he must be made
+abstract first.
+
+Then, if she put her arm in his, it caused him almost torture. 
+His consciousness seemed to split.  The place where she was touching
+him ran hot with friction.  He was one internecine battle, and he
+became cruel to her because of it.
+
+One evening in midsummer Miriam called at the house,
+warm from climbing.  Paul was alone in the kitchen; his mother
+could be heard moving about upstairs.
+
+"Come and look at the sweet-peas," he said to the girl.
+
+They went into the garden.  The sky behind the townlet and the
+church was orange-red; the flower-garden was flooded with a strange
+warm light that lifted every leaf into significance.  Paul passed
+along a fine row of sweet-peas, gathering a blossom here and there,
+all cream and pale blue.  Miriam followed, breathing the fragrance. 
+To her, flowers appealed with such strength she felt she must
+make them part of herself.  When she bent and breathed a flower,
+it was as if she and the flower were loving each other.  Paul hated
+her for it.  There seemed a sort of exposure about the action,
+something too intimate.
+
+
+When he had got a fair bunch, they returned to the house. 
+He listened for a moment to his mother's quiet movement upstairs,
+then he said:
+
+"Come here, and let me pin them in for you."  He arranged them
+two or three at a time in the bosom of her dress, stepping back
+now and then to see the effect.  "You know," he said, taking the pin
+out of his mouth, "a woman ought always to arrange her flowers
+before her glass."
+
+Miriam laughed.  She thought flowers ought to be pinned
+in one's dress without any care.  That Paul should take pains
+to fix her flowers for her was his whim.
+
+He was rather offended at her laughter.
+
+"Some women do--those who look decent," he said.
+
+Miriam laughed again, but mirthlessly, to hear him thus mix
+her up with women in a general way.  From most men she would have
+ignored it.  But from him it hurt her.
+
+He had nearly finished arranging the flowers when he heard
+his mother's footstep on the stairs.  Hurriedly he pushed
+in the last pin and turned away.
+
+"Don't let mater know," he said.
+
+Miriam picked up her books and stood in the doorway looking
+with chagrin at the beautiful sunset.  She would call for Paul
+no more, she said.
+
+"Good-evening, Mrs. Morel," she said, in a deferential way. 
+She sounded as if she felt she had no right to be there.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Miriam?" replied Mrs. Morel coolly.
+
+But Paul insisted on everybody's accepting his friendship
+with the girl, and Mrs. Morel was too wise to have any open rupture.
+
+It was not till he was twenty years old that the family could
+ever afford to go away for a holiday.  Mrs. Morel had never been away
+for a holiday, except to see her sister, since she had been married. 
+Now at last Paul had saved enough money, and they were all going. 
+There was to be a party:  some of Annie's friends, one friend of Paul's,
+a young man in the same office where William had previously been,
+and Miriam.
+
+It was great excitement writing for rooms.  Paul and his
+mother debated it endlessly between them.  They wanted a furnished
+cottage for two weeks.  She thought one week would be enough,
+but he insisted on two.
+
+At last they got an answer from Mablethorpe, a cottage such as they
+wished for thirty shillings a week.  There was immense jubilation. 
+Paul was wild with joy for his mother's sake.  She would have
+a real holiday now.  He and she sat at evening picturing what it
+would be like.  Annie came in, and Leonard, and Alice, and Kitty. 
+There was wild rejoicing and anticipation.  Paul told Miriam. 
+She seemed to brood with joy over it.  But the Morel's house rang
+with excitement.
+
+They were to go on Saturday morning by the seven train. 
+Paul suggested that Miriam should sleep at his house, because it
+was so far for her to walk.  She came down for supper. 
+Everybody was so excited that even Miriam was accepted with warmth. 
+But almost as soon as she entered the feeling in the family became close and tight. 
+He had discovered a poem by Jean Ingelow which mentioned Mablethorpe,
+and so he must read it to Miriam.  He would never have got so far in
+the direction of sentimentality as to read poetry to his own family. 
+But now they condescended to listen.  Miriam sat on the sofa
+absorbed in him.  She always seemed absorbed in him, and by him,
+when he was present.  Mrs. Morel sat jealously in her own chair. 
+She was going to hear also.  And even Annie and the father attended,
+Morel with his head cocked on one side, like somebody listening
+to a sermon and feeling conscious of the fact.  Paul ducked his head
+over the book.  He had got now all the audience he cared for. 
+And Mrs. Morel and Annie almost contested with Miriam who should listen
+best and win his favour.  He was in very high feather.
+
+"But," interrupted Mrs. Morel, "what IS the 'Bride of Enderby'
+that the bells are supposed to ring?"
+
+"It's an old tune they used to play on the bells for a warning
+against water.  I suppose the Bride of Enderby was drowned in a flood,"
+he replied.  He had not the faintest knowledge what it really was,
+but he would never have sunk so low as to confess that to his womenfolk. 
+They listened and believed him.  He believed himself.
+
+"And the people knew what that tune meant?" said his mother.
+
+"Yes--just like the Scotch when they heard 'The Flowers o'
+the Forest'--and when they used to ring the bells backward for alarm."
+
+"How?" said Annie.  "A bell sounds the same whether it's rung
+backwards or forwards."
+
+"But," he said, "if you start with the deep bell and ring up
+to the high one--der--der--der--der--der--der--der--der!"
+
+He ran up the scale.  Everybody thought it clever.  He thought
+so too.  Then, waiting a minute, he continued the poem.
+
+"Hm!" said Mrs. Morel curiously, when he finished.  "But I
+wish everything that's written weren't so sad."
+
+"I canna see what they want drownin' theirselves for,"
+said Morel.
+
+There was a pause.  Annie got up to clear the table.
+
+Miriam rose to help with the pots.
+
+"Let ME help to wash up," she said.
+
+"Certainly not," cried Annie.  "You sit down again. 
+There aren't many."
+
+And Miriam, who could not be familiar and insist, sat down
+again to look at the book with Paul.
+
+He was master of the party; his father was no good.  And great
+tortures he suffered lest the tin box should be put out at Firsby
+instead of at Mablethorpe.  And he wasn't equal to getting a carriage. 
+His bold little mother did that.
+
+"Here!" she cried to a man.  "Here!"
+
+Paul and Annie got behind the rest, convulsed with shamed laughter.
+
+"How much will it be to drive to Brook Cottage?" said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Two shillings."
+
+"Why, how far is it?"
+
+"A good way."
+
+"I don't believe it," she said.
+
+But she scrambled in.  There were eight crowded in one old
+seaside carriage.
+
+"You see," said Mrs. Morel, "it's only threepence each,
+and if it were a tramcar---"
+
+They drove along.  Each cottage they came to, Mrs. Morel cried:
+
+"Is it this?  Now, this is it!"
+
+Everybody sat breathless.  They drove past.  There was
+a universal sigh.
+
+"I'm thankful it wasn't that brute," said Mrs. Morel. 
+"I WAS frightened."  They drove on and on.
+
+At last they descended at a house that stood alone over
+the dyke by the highroad.  There was wild excitement because they
+had to cross a little bridge to get into the front garden. 
+But they loved the house that lay so solitary, with a sea-meadow
+on one side, and immense expanse of land patched in white barley,
+yellow oats, red wheat, and green root-crops, flat and stretching
+level to the sky.
+
+Paul kept accounts.  He and his mother ran the show. 
+The total expenses--lodging, food, everything--was sixteen shillings
+a week per person.  He and Leonard went bathing in the mornings. 
+Morel was wandering abroad quite early.
+
+"You, Paul," his mother called from the bedroom, "eat a piece
+of bread-and-butter."
+
+"All right," he answered.
+
+And when he got back he saw his mother presiding in state at
+the breakfast-table.  The woman of the house was young.  Her husband
+was blind, and she did laundry work.  So Mrs. Morel always washed
+the pots in the kitchen and made the beds.
+
+"But you said you'd have a real holiday," said Paul, "and now
+you work."
+
+"Work!" she exclaimed.  "What are you talking about!"
+
+He loved to go with her across the fields to the village
+and the sea.  She was afraid of the plank bridge, and he abused her
+for being a baby.  On the whole he stuck to her as if he were HER man.
+
+Miriam did not get much of him, except, perhaps, when all the
+others went to the "Coons".  Coons were insufferably stupid to Miriam,
+so he thought they were to himself also, and he preached priggishly
+to Annie about the fatuity of listening to them.  Yet he, too,
+knew all their songs, and sang them along the roads roisterously. 
+And if he found himself listening, the stupidity pleased him very much. 
+Yet to Annie he said:
+
+"Such rot! there isn't a grain of intelligence in it.  Nobody with
+more gumption than a grasshopper could go and sit and listen." 
+And to Miriam he said, with much scorn of Annie and the others: 
+"I suppose they're at the 'Coons'."
+
+It was queer to see Miriam singing coon songs.  She had a straight
+chin that went in a perpendicular line from the lower lip to the turn. 
+She always reminded Paul of some sad Botticelli angel when she sang,
+even when it was:
+
+      "Come down lover's lane
+      For a walk with me, talk with me."
+
+Only when he sketched, or at evening when the others were at
+the "Coons", she had him to herself.  He talked to her endlessly
+about his love of horizontals:  how they, the great levels of sky
+and land in Lincolnshire, meant to him the eternality of the will,
+just as the bowed Norman arches of the church, repeating themselves,
+meant the dogged leaping forward of the persistent human soul,
+on and on, nobody knows where; in contradiction to the perpendicular
+lines and to the Gothic arch, which, he said, leapt up at heaven and
+touched the ecstasy and lost itself in the divine.  Himself, he said,
+was Norman, Miriam was Gothic.  She bowed in consent even to that.
+
+One evening he and she went up the great sweeping shore
+of sand towards Theddlethorpe.  The long breakers plunged and ran
+in a hiss of foam along the coast.  It was a warm evening. 
+There was not a figure but themselves on the far reaches of sand,
+no noise but the sound of the sea.  Paul loved to see it clanging
+at the land.  He loved to feel himself between the noise of it
+and the silence of the sandy shore.  Miriam was with him. 
+Everything grew very intense.  It was quite dark when they
+turned again.  The way home was through a gap in the sandhills,
+and then along a raised grass road between two dykes.  The country
+was black and still.  From behind the sandhills came the whisper
+of the sea.  Paul and Miriam walked in silence.  Suddenly he started. 
+The whole of his blood seemed to burst into flame, and he could
+scarcely breathe.  An enormous orange moon was staring at them
+from the rim of the sandhills.  He stood still, looking at it.
+
+"Ah!" cried Miriam, when she saw it.
+
+He remained perfectly still, staring at the immense and ruddy
+moon, the only thing in the far-reaching darkness of the level. 
+His heart beat heavily, the muscles of his arms contracted.
+
+"What is it?" murmured Miriam, waiting for him.
+
+He turned and looked at her.  She stood beside him, for ever
+in shadow.  Her face, covered with the darkness of her hat, was watching
+him unseen.  But she was brooding.  She was slightly afraid--deeply
+moved and religious.  That was her best state.  He was impotent
+against it.  His blood was concentrated like a flame in his chest. 
+But he could not get across to her.  There were flashes in his blood. 
+But somehow she ignored them.  She was expecting some religious
+state in him.  Still yearning, she was half aware of his passion,
+and gazed at him, troubled.
+
+"What is it?" she murmured again.
+
+"It's the moon," he answered, frowning.
+
+"Yes," she assented.  "Isn't it wonderful?"  She was curious
+about him.  The crisis was past.
+
+He did not know himself what was the matter.  He was naturally
+so young, and their intimacy was so abstract, he did not know he
+wanted to crush her on to his breast to ease the ache there. 
+He was afraid of her.  The fact that he might want her as a man wants
+a woman had in him been suppressed into a shame.  When she shrank
+in her convulsed, coiled torture from the thought of such
+a thing, he had winced to the depths of his soul.  And now this
+"purity" prevented even their first love-kiss.  It was as if she could
+scarcely stand the shock of physical love, even a passionate kiss,
+and then he was too shrinking and sensitive to give it.
+
+As they walked along the dark fen-meadow he watched the moon
+and did not speak.  She plodded beside him.  He hated her, for she
+seemed in some way to make him despise himself.  Looking ahead--he saw
+the one light in the darkness, the window of their lamp-lit cottage.
+
+He loved to think of his mother, and the other jolly people.
+
+"Well, everybody else has been in long ago!" said his mother
+as they entered.
+
+"What does that matter!" he cried irritably.  "I can go a walk
+if I like, can't I?"
+
+"And I should have thought you could get in to supper with
+the rest," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"I shall please myself," he retorted.  "It's not LATE. 
+I shall do as I like."
+
+"Very well," said his mother cuttingly, "then DO as you like." 
+And she took no further notice of him that evening.  Which he
+pretended neither to notice nor to care about, but sat reading. 
+Miriam read also, obliterating herself.  Mrs. Morel hated her
+for making her son like this.  She watched Paul growing irritable,
+priggish, and melancholic.  For this she put the blame on Miriam. 
+Annie and all her friends joined against the girl.  Miriam had no
+friend of her own, only Paul.  But she did not suffer so much,
+because she despised the triviality of these other people.
+
+And Paul hated her because, somehow, she spoilt his ease
+and naturalness.  And he writhed himself with a feeling of humiliation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+STRIFE IN LOVE
+
+ARTHUR finished his apprenticeship, and got a job on the electrical
+plant at Minton Pit.  He earned very little, but had a good chance
+of getting on.  But he was wild and restless.  He did not drink
+nor gamble.  Yet he somehow contrived to get into endless scrapes,
+always through some hot-headed thoughtlessness.  Either he went
+rabbiting in the woods, like a poacher, or he stayed in Nottingham
+all night instead of coming home, or he miscalculated his dive
+into the canal at Bestwood, and scored his chest into one mass
+of wounds on the raw stones and tins at the bottom.
+
+He had not been at his work many months when again he did
+not come home one night.
+
+"Do you know where Arthur is?" asked Paul at breakfast.
+
+"I do not," replied his mother.
+
+"He is a fool," said Paul.  "And if he DID anything I
+shouldn't mind.  But no, he simply can't come away from a game
+of whist, or else he must see a girl home from the skating-rink--quite
+proprietously--and so can't get home.  He's a fool."
+
+"I don't know that it would make it any better if he did
+something to make us all ashamed," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Well, I should respect him more," said Paul.
+
+"I very much doubt it," said his mother coldly.
+
+They went on with breakfast.
+
+"Are you fearfully fond of him?"  Paul asked his mother.
+
+"What do you ask that for?"
+
+"Because they say a woman always like the youngest best."
+
+"She may do--but I don't.  No, he wearies me."
+
+"And you'd actually rather he was good?"
+
+"I'd rather he showed some of a man's common sense."
+
+Paul was raw and irritable.  He also wearied his mother very often. 
+She saw the sunshine going out of him, and she resented it.
+
+As they were finishing breakfast came the postman with a letter
+from Derby.  Mrs. Morel screwed up her eyes to look at the address.
+
+"Give it here, blind eye!" exclaimed her son, snatching it
+away from her.
+
+She started, and almost boxed his ears.
+
+"It's from your son, Arthur," he said.
+
+"What now---!" cried Mrs. Morel.
+
+"'My dearest Mother,'" Paul read, "'I don't know what made
+me such a fool.  I want you to come and fetch me back from here. 
+I came with Jack Bredon yesterday, instead of going to work,
+and enlisted.  He said he was sick of wearing the seat of a stool out,
+and, like the idiot you know I am, I came away with him.
+
+"'I have taken the King's shilling, but perhaps if you
+came for me they would let me go back with you.  I was a fool
+when I did it.  I don't want to be in the army.  My dear mother,
+I am nothing but a trouble to you.  But if you get me out of this,
+I promise I will have more sense and consideration. . . .'"
+
+Mrs. Morel sat down in her rocking-chair.
+
+"Well, NOW," she cried, "let him stop!"
+
+"Yes," said Paul, "let him stop."
+
+There was silence.  The mother sat with her hands folded
+in her apron, her face set, thinking.
+
+"If I'm not SICK!" she cried suddenly.  "Sick!"
+
+"Now," said Paul, beginning to frown, "you're not going
+to worry your soul out about this, do you hear."
+
+"I suppose I'm to take it as a blessing," she flashed,
+turning on her son.
+
+"You're not going to mount it up to a tragedy, so there,"
+he retorted.
+
+"The FOOL!--the young fool!" she cried.
+
+"He'll look well in uniform," said Paul irritatingly.
+
+His mother turned on him like a fury.
+
+"Oh, will he!" she cried.  "Not in my eyes!"
+
+"He should get in a cavalry regiment; he'll have the time
+of his life, and will look an awful swell."
+
+"Swell!--SWELL!--a mighty swell idea indeed!--a common soldier!"
+
+"Well," said Paul, "what am I but a common clerk?"
+
+"A good deal, my boy!" cried his mother, stung.
+
+"What?"
+
+"At any rate, a MAN, and not a thing in a red coat."
+
+"I shouldn't mind being in a red coat--or dark blue, that would
+suit me better--if they didn't boss me about too much."
+
+But his mother had ceased to listen.
+
+"Just as he was getting on, or might have been getting on,
+at his job--a young nuisance--here he goes and ruins himself for life. 
+What good will he be, do you think, after THIS?"
+
+"It may lick him into shape beautifully," said Paul.
+
+"Lick him into shape!--lick what marrow there WAS out of his bones. 
+A SOLDIER!--a common SOLDIER!--nothing but a body that makes movements
+when it hears a shout!  It's a fine thing!"
+
+"I can't understand why it upsets you," said Paul.
+
+"No, perhaps you can't. But I understand"; and she sat back
+in her chair, her chin in one hand, holding her elbow with the other,
+brimmed up with wrath and chagrin.
+
+"And shall you go to Derby?" asked Paul.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's no good."
+
+"I'll see for myself."
+
+"And why on earth don't you let him stop.  It's just what
+he wants."
+
+"Of course," cried the mother, "YOU know what he wants!"
+
+She got ready and went by the first train to Derby, where she
+saw her son and the sergeant.  It was, however, no good.
+
+When Morel was having his dinner in the evening, she said suddenly:
+
+"I've had to go to Derby to-day."
+
+The miner turned up his eyes, showing the whites in his black face.
+
+"Has ter, lass.  What took thee there?"
+
+"That Arthur!"
+
+"Oh--an' what's agate now?"
+
+"He's only enlisted."
+
+Morel put down his knife and leaned back in his chair.
+
+"Nay," he said, "that he niver 'as!"
+
+"And is going down to Aldershot tomorrow."
+
+"Well!" exclaimed the miner.  "That's a winder."  He considered
+it a moment, said "H'm!" and proceeded with his dinner.  Suddenly his
+face contracted with wrath.  "I hope he may never set foot i'
+my house again," he said.
+
+"The idea!" cried Mrs. Morel.  "Saying such a thing!"
+
+"I do," repeated Morel.  "A fool as runs away for a soldier,
+let 'im look after 'issen; I s'll do no more for 'im."
+
+"A fat sight you have done as it is," she said.
+
+And Morel was almost ashamed to go to his public-house
+that evening.
+
+"Well, did you go?" said Paul to his mother when he came home.
+
+"I did."
+
+"And could you see him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He blubbered when I came away."
+
+"H'm!"
+
+"And so did I, so you needn't 'h'm'!"
+
+Mrs. Morel fretted after her son.  She knew he would not
+like the army.  He did not.  The discipline was intolerable to him.
+
+"But the doctor," she said with some pride to Paul, "said he
+was perfectly proportioned--almost exactly; all his measurements
+were correct.  He IS good-looking, you know."
+
+"He's awfully nice-looking. But he doesn't fetch the girls
+like William, does he?"
+
+"No; it's a different character.  He's a good deal like
+his father, irresponsible."
+
+To console his mother, Paul did not go much to Willey
+Farm at this time.  And in the autumn exhibition of students'
+work in the Castle he had two studies, a landscape in water-colour
+and a still life in oil, both of which had first-prize awards. 
+He was highly excited.
+
+"What do you think I've got for my pictures, mother?" he asked,
+coming home one evening.  She saw by his eyes he was glad. 
+Her face flushed.
+
+"Now, how should I know, my boy!"
+
+"A first prize for those glass jars---"
+
+"H'm!"
+
+"And a first prize for that sketch up at Willey Farm."
+
+"Both first?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"H'm!"
+
+There was a rosy, bright look about her, though she said nothing.
+
+"It's nice," he said, "isn't it?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Why don't you praise me up to the skies?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I should have the trouble of dragging you down again,"
+she said.
+
+But she was full of joy, nevertheless.  William had brought
+her his sporting trophies.  She kept them still, and she did not
+forgive his death.  Arthur was handsome--at least, a good specimen--and warm
+and generous, and probably would do well in the end.  But Paul
+was going to distinguish himself.  She had a great belief in him,
+the more because he was unaware of his own powers.  There was
+so much to come out of him.  Life for her was rich with promise. 
+She was to see herself fulfilled.  Not for nothing had been
+her struggle.
+
+Several times during the exhibition Mrs. Morel went to the
+Castle unknown to Paul.  She wandered down the long room looking
+at the other exhibits.  Yes, they were good.  But they had not in
+them a certain something which she demanded for her satisfaction. 
+Some made her jealous, they were so good.  She looked at them
+a long time trying to find fault with them.  Then suddenly she
+had a shock that made her heart beat.  There hung Paul's picture! 
+She knew it as if it were printed on her heart.
+
+"Name--Paul Morel--First Prize."
+
+It looked so strange, there in public, on the walls of the
+Castle gallery, where in her lifetime she had seen so many pictures. 
+And she glanced round to see if anyone had noticed her again in front
+of the same sketch.
+
+But she felt a proud woman.  When she met well-dressed ladies
+going home to the Park, she thought to herself:
+
+"Yes, you look very well--but I wonder if YOUR son has two
+first prizes in the Castle."
+
+And she walked on, as proud a little woman as any in Nottingham. 
+And Paul felt he had done something for her, if only a trifle. 
+All his work was hers.
+
+One day, as he was going up Castle Gate, he met Miriam.  He had
+seen her on the Sunday, and had not expected to meet her in town. 
+She was walking with a rather striking woman, blonde, with a sullen
+expression, and a defiant carriage.  It was strange how Miriam,
+in her bowed, meditative bearing, looked dwarfed beside this woman
+with the handsome shoulders.  Miriam watched Paul searchingly. 
+His gaze was on the stranger, who ignored him.  The girl saw his
+masculine spirit rear its head.
+
+"Hello!" he said, "you didn't tell me you were coming to town."
+
+"No," replied Miriam, half apologetically.  "I drove
+in to Cattle Market with father."
+
+He looked at her companion.
+
+"I've told you about Mrs. Dawes," said Miriam huskily;
+she was nervous.  "Clara, do you know Paul?"
+
+"I think I've seen him before," replied Mrs. Dawes indifferently,
+as she shook hands with him.  She had scornful grey eyes, a skin
+like white honey, and a full mouth, with a slightly lifted upper
+lip that did not know whether it was raised in scorn of all men
+or out of eagerness to be kissed, but which believed the former. 
+She carried her head back, as if she had drawn away in contempt,
+perhaps from men also.  She wore a large, dowdy hat of black beaver,
+and a sort of slightly affected simple dress that made her look
+rather sack-like.  She was evidently poor, and had not much taste. 
+Miriam usually looked nice.
+
+"Where have you seen me?"  Paul asked of the woman.
+
+She looked at him as if she would not trouble to answer.  Then:
+
+"Walking with Louie Travers," she said.
+
+Louie was one of the "Spiral" girls.
+
+"Why, do you know her?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer.  He turned to Miriam.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked.
+
+"To the Castle."
+
+"What train are you going home by?"
+
+"I am driving with father.  I wish you could come too. 
+What time are you free?"
+
+"You know not till eight to-night, damn it!"
+
+And directly the two women moved on.
+
+Paul remembered that Clara Dawes was the daughter of an old
+friend of Mrs. Leivers.  Miriam had sought her out because she
+had once been Spiral overseer at Jordan's, and because her husband,
+Baxter Dawes, was smith for the factory, making the irons for
+cripple instruments, and so on.  Through her Miriam felt she got
+into direct contact with Jordan's, and could estimate better
+Paul's position.  But Mrs. Dawes was separated from her husband,
+and had taken up Women's Rights.  She was supposed to be clever. 
+It interested Paul.
+
+Baxter Dawes he knew and disliked.  The smith was a man
+of thirty-one or thirty-two. He came occasionally through Paul's
+corner--a big, well-set man, also striking to look at, and handsome. 
+There was a peculiar similarity between himself and his wife. 
+He had the same white skin, with a clear, golden tinge.  His hair
+was of soft brown, his moustache was golden.  And he had a similar
+defiance in his bearing and manner.  But then came the difference. 
+His eyes, dark brown and quick-shifting, were dissolute. 
+They protruded very slightly, and his eyelids hung over them in a
+way that was half hate.  His mouth, too, was sensual.  His whole
+manner was of cowed defiance, as if he were ready to knock anybody
+down who disapproved of him--perhaps because he really disapproved
+of himself.
+
+From the first day he had hated Paul.  Finding the lad's impersonal,
+deliberate gaze of an artist on his face, he got into a fury.
+
+"What are yer lookin' at?" he sneered, bullying.
+
+The boy glanced away.  But the smith used to stand behind
+the counter and talk to Mr. Pappleworth.  His speech was dirty,
+with a kind of rottenness.  Again he found the youth with his cool,
+critical gaze fixed on his face.  The smith started round as if he
+had been stung.
+
+"What'r yer lookin' at, three hap'orth o' pap?" he snarled.
+
+The boy shrugged his shoulders slightly.
+
+"Why yer---!" shouted Dawes.
+
+"Leave him alone," said Mr. Pappleworth, in that insinuating
+voice which means, "He's only one of your good little sops who can't
+help it."
+
+Since that time the boy used to look at the man every time
+he came through with the same curious criticism, glancing away
+before he met the smith's eye.  It made Dawes furious.  They hated
+each other in silence.
+
+Clara Dawes had no children.  When she had left her husband the
+home had been broken up, and she had gone to live with her mother. 
+Dawes lodged with his sister.  In the same house was a sister-in-law, and
+somehow Paul knew that this girl, Louie Travers, was now Dawes's woman. 
+She was a handsome, insolent hussy, who mocked at the youth, and yet
+flushed if he walked along to the station with her as she went home.
+
+The next time he went to see Miriam it was Saturday evening. 
+She had a fire in the parlour, and was waiting for him.  The others,
+except her father and mother and the young children, had gone out,
+so the two had the parlour together.  It was a long, low, warm room. 
+There were three of Paul's small sketches on the wall, and his photo was
+on the mantelpiece.  On the table and on the high old
+rosewood piano were bowls of coloured leaves.  He sat in the armchair,
+she crouched on the hearthrug near his feet.  The glow was warm
+on her handsome, pensive face as she kneeled there like a devotee.
+
+"What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?" she asked quietly.
+
+"She doesn't look very amiable," he replied.
+
+"No, but don't you think she's a fine woman?" she said,
+in a deep tone,
+
+"Yes--in stature.  But without a grain of taste.  I like her
+for some things.  IS she disagreeable?"
+
+"I don't think so.  I think she's dissatisfied."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"Well--how would you like to be tied for life to a man like that?"
+
+"Why did she marry him, then, if she was to have revulsions
+so soon?"
+
+"Ay, why did she!" repeated Miriam bitterly.
+
+"And I should have thought she had enough fight in her
+to match him," he said.
+
+Miriam bowed her head.
+
+"Ay?" she queried satirically.  "What makes you think so?"
+
+"Look at her mouth--made for passion--and the very setback
+of her throat---" He threw his head back in Clara's defiant manner.
+
+Miriam bowed a little lower.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+There was a silence for some moments, while he thought of Clara.
+
+"And what were the things you liked about her?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know--her skin and the texture of her--and her--I don't
+know--there's a sort of fierceness somewhere in her.  I appreciate
+her as an artist, that's all."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He wondered why Miriam crouched there brooding in that strange way. 
+It irritated him.
+
+"You don't really like her, do you?" he asked the girl.
+
+She looked at him with her great, dazzled dark eyes.
+
+"I do," she said.
+
+"You don't--you can't--not really."
+
+"Then what?" she asked slowly.
+
+"Eh, I don't know--perhaps you like her because she's got a grudge
+against men."
+
+That was more probably one of his own reasons for liking
+Mrs. Dawes, but this did not occur to him.  They were silent. 
+There had come into his forehead a knitting of the brows which was
+becoming habitual with him, particularly when he was with Miriam. 
+She longed to smooth it away, and she was afraid of it.  It seemed
+the stamp of a man who was not her man in Paul Morel.
+
+There were some crimson berries among the leaves in the bowl. 
+He reached over and pulled out a bunch.
+
+"If you put red berries in your hair," he said, "why would
+you look like some witch or priestess, and never like a reveller?"
+
+She laughed with a naked, painful sound.
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+His vigorous warm hands were playing excitedly with the berries.
+
+"Why can't you laugh?" he said.  "You never laugh laughter. 
+You only laugh when something is odd or incongruous, and then it
+almost seems to hurt you."
+
+She bowed her head as if he were scolding her.
+
+"I wish you could laugh at me just for one minute--just
+for one minute.  I feel as if it would set something free."
+
+"But"--and she looked up at him with eyes frightened
+and struggling--"I do laugh at you--I DO."
+
+"Never!  There's always a kind of intensity.  When you laugh
+I could always cry; it seems as if it shows up your suffering. 
+Oh, you make me knit the brows of my very soul and cogitate."
+
+Slowly she shook her head despairingly.
+
+"I'm sure I don't want to," she said.
+
+"I'm so damned spiritual with YOU always!" he cried.
+
+She remained silent, thinking, "Then why don't you be otherwise." 
+But he saw her crouching, brooding figure, and it seemed to tear
+him in two.
+
+"But, there, it's autumn," he said, "and everybody feels
+like a disembodied spirit then."
+
+There was still another silence.  This peculiar sadness
+between them thrilled her soul.  He seemed so beautiful with his
+eyes gone dark, and looking as if they were deep as the deepest well.
+
+"You make me so spiritual!" he lamented.  "And I don't want
+to be spiritual."
+
+She took her finger from her mouth with a little pop, and looked
+up at him almost challenging.  But still her soul was naked in her
+great dark eyes, and there was the same yearning appeal upon her. 
+If he could have kissed her in abstract purity he would have done so. 
+But he could not kiss her thus--and she seemed to leave no other way. 
+And she yearned to him.
+
+He gave a brief laugh.
+
+"Well," he said, "get that French and we'll do some--some Verlaine."
+
+"Yes," she said in a deep tone, almost of resignation. 
+And she rose and got the books.  And her rather red, nervous hands
+looked so pitiful, he was mad to comfort her and kiss her.  But then
+be dared not--or could not.  There was something prevented him. 
+His kisses were wrong for her.  They continued the reading till ten
+o'clock, when they went into the kitchen, and Paul was natural and jolly
+again with the father and mother.  His eyes were dark and shining;
+there was a kind of fascination about him.
+
+When he went into the barn for his bicycle he found the front
+wheel punctured.
+
+"Fetch me a drop of water in a bowl," he said to her. 
+"I shall be late, and then I s'll catch it."
+
+He lighted the hurricane lamp, took off his coat, turned up
+the bicycle, and set speedily to work.  Miriam came with the bowl
+of water and stood close to him, watching.  She loved to see
+his hands doing things.  He was slim and vigorous, with a kind
+of easiness even in his most hasty movements.  And busy at his work
+he seemed to forget her.  She loved him absorbedly.  She wanted
+to run her hands down his sides.  She always wanted to embrace him,
+so long as he did not want her.
+
+"There!" he said, rising suddenly.  "Now, could you have done
+it quicker?"
+
+"No!" she laughed.
+
+He straightened himself.  His back was towards her.  She put
+her two hands on his sides, and ran them quickly down.
+
+"You are so FINE!" she said.
+
+He laughed, hating her voice, but his blood roused to a wave
+of flame by her hands.  She did not seem to realise HIM in all this. 
+He might have been an object.  She never realised the male he was.
+
+He lighted his bicycle-lamp, bounced the machine on the barn
+floor to see that the tyres were sound, and buttoned his coat.
+
+"That's all right!" he said.
+
+She was trying the brakes, that she knew were broken.
+
+"Did you have them mended?" she asked.
+
+"No!"
+
+"But why didn't you?"
+
+"The back one goes on a bit."
+
+"But it's not safe."
+
+"I can use my toe."
+
+"I wish you'd had them mended," she murmured.
+
+"Don't worry--come to tea tomorrow, with Edgar."
+
+"Shall we?"
+
+"Do--about four.  I'll come to meet you."
+
+"Very well."
+
+She was pleased.  They went across the dark yard to the gate. 
+Looking across, he saw through the uncurtained window of the
+kitchen the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Leivers in the warm glow. 
+It looked very cosy.  The road, with pine trees, was quite black
+in front.
+
+"Till tomorrow," he said, jumping on his bicycle.
+
+"You'll take care, won't you?" she pleaded.
+
+"Yes."
+
+His voice already came out of the darkness.  She stood a moment
+watching the light from his lamp race into obscurity along the ground. 
+She turned very slowly indoors.  Orion was wheeling up over the wood,
+his dog twinkling after him, half smothered.  For the rest the world
+was full of darkness, and silent, save for the breathing of cattle
+in their stalls.  She prayed earnestly for his safety that night. 
+When he left her, she often lay in anxiety, wondering if he had got
+home safely.
+
+He dropped down the hills on his bicycle.  The roads were greasy,
+so he had to let it go.  He felt a pleasure as the machine plunged
+over the second, steeper drop in the hill.  "Here goes!" he said. 
+It was risky, because of the curve in the darkness at the bottom,
+and because of the brewers' waggons with drunken waggoners asleep. 
+His bicycle seemed to fall beneath him, and he loved it. 
+Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. 
+He feels he is not valued, so he will risk destroying himself to
+deprive her altogether.
+
+The stars on the lake seemed to leap like grasshoppers,
+silver upon the blackness, as he spun past.  Then there was the long
+climb home.
+
+"See, mother!" he said, as he threw her the berries and leaves
+on to the table.
+
+"H'm!" she said, glancing at them, then away again. 
+She sat reading, alone, as she always did.
+
+"Aren't they pretty?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He knew she was cross with him.  After a few minutes he said:
+
+"Edgar and Miriam are coming to tea tomorrow."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"You don't mind?"
+
+Still she did not answer.
+
+"Do you?" he asked.
+
+"You know whether I mind or not."
+
+"I don't see why you should.  I have plenty of meals there."
+
+"You do."
+
+"Then why do you begrudge them tea?"
+
+"I begrudge whom tea?"
+
+"What are you so horrid for?"
+
+"Oh, say no more!  You've asked her to tea, it's quite sufficient. 
+She'll come."
+
+He was very angry with his mother.  He knew it was merely
+Miriam she objected to.  He flung off his boots and went to bed.
+
+Paul went to meet his friends the next afternoon.  He was glad
+to see them coming.  They arrived home at about four o'clock.
+Everywhere was clean and still for Sunday afternoon.  Mrs. Morel sat
+in her black dress and black apron.  She rose to meet the visitors. 
+With Edgar she was cordial, but with Miriam cold and rather grudging. 
+Yet Paul thought the girl looked so nice in her brown cashmere frock.
+
+He helped his mother to get the tea ready.  Miriam would have
+gladly proffered, but was afraid.  He was rather proud of his home. 
+There was about it now, he thought, a certain distinction. 
+The chairs were only wooden, and the sofa was old.  But the hearthrug
+and cushions were cosy; the pictures were prints in good taste;
+there was a simplicity in everything, and plenty of books. 
+He was never ashamed in the least of his home, nor was Miriam
+of hers, because both were what they should be, and warm. 
+And then he was proud of the table; the china was pretty,
+the cloth was fine.  It did not matter that the spoons were not
+silver nor the knives ivory-handled; everything looked nice. 
+Mrs. Morel had managed wonderfully while her children were growing up,
+so that nothing was out of place.
+
+Miriam talked books a little.  That was her unfailing topic. 
+But Mrs. Morel was not cordial, and turned soon to Edgar.
+
+At first Edgar and Miriam used to go into Mrs. Morel's pew. 
+Morel never went to chapel, preferring the public-house.  Mrs. Morel,
+like a little champion, sat at the head of her pew, Paul at the other end;
+and at first Miriam sat next to him.  Then the chapel was like home. 
+It was a pretty place, with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars,
+and flowers.  And the same people had sat in the same places ever
+since he was a boy.  It was wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit
+there for an hour and a half, next to Miriam, and near to his mother,
+uniting his two loves under the spell of the place of worship. 
+Then he felt warm and happy and religious at once.  And after
+chapel he walked home with Miriam, whilst Mrs. Morel spent the rest
+of the evening with her old friend, Mrs. Burns.  He was keenly
+alive on his walks on Sunday nights with Edgar and Miriam. 
+He never went past the pits at night, by the lighted lamp-house,
+the tall black headstocks and lines of trucks, past the fans spinning
+slowly like shadows, without the feeling of Miriam returning to him,
+keen and almost unbearable.
+
+She did not very long occupy the Morels' pew.  Her father took
+one for themselves once more.  It was under the little gallery,
+opposite the Morels'.  When Paul and his mother came in the chapel
+the Leivers's pew was always empty.  He was anxious for fear she would
+not come:  it was so far, and there were so many rainy Sundays. 
+Then, often very late indeed, she came in, with her long stride,
+her head bowed, her face hidden under her bat of dark green velvet. 
+Her face, as she sat opposite, was always in shadow.  But it gave
+him a very keen feeling, as if all his soul stirred within him,
+to see her there.  It was not the same glow, happiness, and pride,
+that he felt in having his mother in charge:  something more
+wonderful, less human, and tinged to intensity by a pain,
+as if there were something he could not get to.
+
+At this time he was beginning to question the orthodox creed. 
+He was twenty-one, and she was twenty.  She was beginning
+to dread the spring:  he became so wild, and hurt her so much. 
+All the way he went cruelly smashing her beliefs.  Edgar enjoyed it. 
+He was by nature critical and rather dispassionate.  But Miriam
+suffered exquisite pain, as, with an intellect like a knife, the man
+she loved examined her religion in which she lived and moved and had
+her being.  But he did not spare her.  He was cruel.  And when they
+went alone he was even more fierce, as if he would kill her soul. 
+He bled her beliefs till she almost lost consciousness.
+
+"She exults--she exults as she carries him off from me,"
+Mrs. Morel cried in her heart when Paul had gone.  "She's not
+like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. 
+She wants to absorb him.  She wants to draw him out and absorb
+him till there is nothing left of him, even for himself. 
+He will never be a man on his own feet--she will suck him up." 
+So the mother sat, and battled and brooded bitterly.
+
+And he, coming home from his walks with Miriam, was wild
+with torture.  He walked biting his lips and with clenched fists,
+going at a great rate.  Then, brought up against a stile, he stood for
+some minutes, and did not move.  There was a great hollow of darkness
+fronting him, and on the black upslopes patches of tiny lights,
+and in the lowest trough of the night, a flare of the pit. 
+It was all weird and dreadful.  Why was he torn so, almost bewildered,
+and unable to move?  Why did his mother sit at home and suffer? 
+He knew she suffered badly.  But why should she?  And why did
+he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought
+of his mother.  If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he
+hated her--and he easily hated her.  Why did she make him feel
+as if he were uncertain of himself, insecure, an indefinite thing,
+as if he had not sufficient sheathing to prevent the night and the
+space breaking into him?  How he hated her!  And then, what a rush
+of tenderness and humility!
+
+Suddenly he plunged on again, running home.  His mother
+saw on him the marks of some agony, and she said nothing. 
+But he had to make her talk to him.  Then she was angry with him
+for going so far with Miriam.
+
+"Why don't you like her, mother?" he cried in despair.
+
+"I don't know, my boy," she replied piteously.  "I'm sure I've
+tried to like her.  I've tried and tried, but I can't--I can't!"
+
+And he felt dreary and hopeless between the two.
+
+Spring was the worst time.  He was changeable, and intense
+and cruel.  So he decided to stay away from her.  Then came the
+hours when he knew Miriam was expecting him.  His mother watched
+him growing restless.  He could not go on with his work.  He could
+do nothing.  It was as if something were drawing his soul out towards
+Willey Farm.  Then he put on his hat and went, saying nothing. 
+And his mother knew he was gone.  And as soon as he was on the way
+he sighed with relief.  And when he was with her he was cruel again.
+
+One day in March he lay on the bank of Nethermere, with Miriam
+sitting beside him.  It was a glistening, white-and-blue day. 
+Big clouds, so brilliant, went by overhead, while shadows stole
+along on the water.  The clear spaces in the sky were of clean,
+cold blue.  Paul lay on his back in the old grass, looking up. 
+He could not bear to look at Miriam.  She seemed to want him,
+and he resisted.  He resisted all the time.  He wanted now to give
+her passion and tenderness, and he could not.  He felt that she wanted
+the soul out of his body, and not him.  All his strength and energy
+she drew into herself through some channel which united them. 
+She did not want to meet him, so that there were two of them,
+man and woman together.  She wanted to draw all of him into her. 
+It urged him to an intensity like madness, which fascinated him,
+as drug-taking might.
+
+He was discussing Michael Angelo.  It felt to her as if she were
+fingering the very quivering tissue, the very protoplasm of life,
+as she heard him.  It gave her deepest satisfaction.  And in the end
+it frightened her.  There he lay in the white intensity of his search,
+and his voice gradually filled her with fear, so level it was,
+almost inhuman, as if in a trance.
+
+"Don't talk any more," she pleaded softly, laying her hand
+on his forehead.
+
+He lay quite still, almost unable to move.  His body was
+somewhere discarded.
+
+"Why not?  Are you tired?"
+
+"Yes, and it wears you out."
+
+He laughed shortly, realising.
+
+"Yet you always make me like it," he said.
+
+"I don't wish to," she said, very low.
+
+"Not when you've gone too far, and you feel you can't bear it. 
+But your unconscious self always asks it of me.  And I suppose I
+want it."
+
+He went on, in his dead fashion:
+
+"If only you could want ME, and not want what I can reel off
+for you! "
+
+
+"I!" she cried bitterly--"I!  Why, when would you let me take you?"
+
+"Then it's my fault," he said, and, gathering himself together,
+he got up and began to talk trivialities.  He felt insubstantial. 
+In a vague way he hated her for it.  And he knew he was as much to
+blame himself.  This, however, did not prevent his hating her.
+
+One evening about this time he had walked along the home road
+with her.  They stood by the pasture leading down to the wood,
+unable to part.  As the stars came out the clouds closed.  They had
+glimpses of their own constellation, Orion, towards the west. 
+His jewels glimmered for a moment, his dog ran low, struggling with
+difficulty through the spume of cloud.
+
+Orion was for them chief in significance among the constellations. 
+They had gazed at him in their strange, surcharged hours of feeling,
+until they seemed themselves to live in every one of his stars. 
+This evening Paul had been moody and perverse.  Orion had seemed just
+an ordinary constellation to him.  He had fought against his glamour
+and fascination.  Miriam was watching her lover's mood carefully. 
+But he said nothing that gave him away, till the moment came to part,
+when he stood frowning gloomily at the gathered clouds, behind which
+the great constellation must be striding still.
+
+There was to be a little party at his house the next day,
+at which she was to attend.
+
+"I shan't come and meet you," he said.
+
+"Oh, very well; it's not very nice out," she replied slowly.
+
+"It's not that--only they don't like me to.  They say I care
+more for you than for them.  And you understand, don't you? 
+You know it's only friendship."
+
+Miriam was astonished and hurt for him.  It had cost him an
+effort.  She left him, wanting to spare him any further humiliation. 
+A fine rain blew in her face as she walked along the road. 
+She was hurt deep down; and she despised him for being blown
+about by any wind of authority.  And in her heart of hearts,
+unconsciously, she felt that he was trying to get away from her. 
+This she would never have acknowledged.  She pitied him.
+
+At this time Paul became an important factor in Jordan's warehouse. 
+Mr. Pappleworth left to set up a business of his own, and Paul
+remained with Mr. Jordan as Spiral overseer.  His wages were
+to be raised to thirty shillings at the year-end, if things went well.
+
+Still on Friday night Miriam often came down for her French lesson. 
+Paul did not go so frequently to Willey Farm, and she grieved at
+the thought of her education's coming to end; moreover, they both
+loved to be together, in spite of discords.  So they read Balzac,
+and did compositions, and felt highly cultured.
+
+Friday night was reckoning night for the miners. 
+Morel "reckoned"--shared up the money of the stall--either in the New Inn
+at Bretty or in his own house, according as his fellow-butties wished. 
+Barker had turned a non-drinker, so now the men reckoned at Morel's house.
+
+Annie, who had been teaching away, was at home again. 
+She was still a tomboy; and she was engaged to be married. 
+Paul was studying design.
+
+Morel was always in good spirits on Friday evening, unless the
+week's earnings were small.  He bustled immediately after his dinner,
+prepared to get washed.  It was decorum for the women to absent
+themselves while the men reckoned.  Women were not supposed to spy
+into such a masculine privacy as the butties' reckoning, nor were they
+to know the exact amount of the week's earnings.  So, whilst her
+father was spluttering in the scullery, Annie went out to spend
+an hour with a neighbour.  Mrs. Morel attended to her baking.
+
+"Shut that doo-er!" bawled Morel furiously.
+
+Annie banged it behind her, and was gone.
+
+"If tha oppens it again while I'm weshin' me, I'll ma'e thy
+jaw rattle," he threatened from the midst of his soap-suds.  Paul
+and the mother frowned to hear him.
+
+Presently he came running out of the scullery, with the soapy
+water dripping from him, dithering with cold.
+
+"Oh, my sirs!" he said.  "Wheer's my towel?"
+
+It was hung on a chair to warm before the fire, otherwise he
+would have bullied and blustered.  He squatted on his heels before
+the hot baking-fire to dry himself.
+
+"F-ff-f!" he went, pretending to shudder with cold.
+
+"Goodness, man, don't be such a kid!" said Mrs. Morel. 
+"It's NOT cold."
+
+"Thee strip thysen stark nak'd to wesh thy flesh i' that scullery,"
+said the miner, as he rubbed his hair; "nowt b'r a ice-'ouse!"
+
+"And I shouldn't make that fuss," replied his wife.
+
+"No, tha'd drop down stiff, as dead as a door-knob, wi'
+thy nesh sides."
+
+"Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?" asked Paul, curious.
+
+"Eh, I dunno; that's what they say," replied his father. 
+"But there's that much draught i' yon scullery, as it blows through
+your ribs like through a five-barred gate."
+
+"It would have some difficulty in blowing through yours,"
+said Mrs. Morel.
+
+Morel looked down ruefully at his sides.
+
+"Me!" he exclaimed.  "I'm nowt b'r a skinned rabbit. 
+My bones fair juts out on me."
+
+"I should like to know where," retorted his wife.
+
+"Iv'ry-wheer!  I'm nobbut a sack o' faggots."
+
+Mrs. Morel laughed.  He had still a wonderfully young body,
+muscular, without any fat.  His skin was smooth and clear. 
+It might have been the body of a man of twenty-eight, except that
+there were, perhaps, too many blue scars, like tattoo-marks, where the
+coal-dust remained under the skin, and that his chest was too hairy. 
+But he put his hand on his side ruefully.  It was his fixed belief that,
+because be did not get fat, he was as thin as a starved rat. 
+Paul looked at his father's thick, brownish hands all scarred,
+with broken nails, rubbing the fine smoothness of his sides, and the
+incongruity struck him.  It seemed strange they were the same flesh.
+
+"I suppose," he said to his father, "you had a good figure once."
+
+"Eh!" exclaimed the miner, glancing round, startled and timid,
+like a child.
+
+"He had," exclaimed Mrs. Morel, "if he didn't hurtle himself
+up as if he was trying to get in the smallest space he could."
+
+"Me!" exclaimed Morel--"me a good figure!  I wor niver much
+more n'r a skeleton."
+
+"Man!" cried his wife, "don't be such a pulamiter!"
+
+"'Strewth!" he said.  "Tha's niver knowed me but what I looked
+as if I wor goin' off in a rapid decline."
+
+She sat and laughed.
+
+"You've had a constitution like iron," she said; "and never
+a man had a better start, if it was body that counted.  You should
+have seen him as a young man," she cried suddenly to Paul,
+drawing herself up to imitate her husband's once handsome bearing.
+
+Morel watched her shyly.  He saw again the passion she
+had had for him.  It blazed upon her for a moment.  He was shy,
+rather scared, and humble.  Yet again he felt his old glow. 
+And then immediately he felt the ruin he had made during these years. 
+He wanted to bustle about, to run away from it.
+
+"Gi'e my back a bit of a wesh," he asked her.
+
+His wife brought a well-soaped flannel and clapped it
+on his shoulders.  He gave a jump.
+
+"Eh, tha mucky little 'ussy!" he cried.  "Cowd as death!"
+
+"You ought to have been a salamander," she laughed,
+washing his back.  It was very rarely she would do anything
+so personal for him.  The children did those things.
+
+"The next world won't be half hot enough for you," she added.
+
+"No," he said; "tha'lt see as it's draughty for me."
+
+But she had finished.  She wiped him in a desultory fashion,
+and went upstairs, returning immediately with his shifting-trousers.
+When he was dried he struggled into his shirt.  Then, ruddy and shiny,
+with hair on end, and his flannelette shirt hanging over his
+pit-trousers, he stood warming the garments he was going to put on. 
+He turned them, he pulled them inside out, he scorched them.
+
+"Goodness, man!" cried Mrs. Morel, "get dressed!"
+
+"Should thee like to clap thysen into britches as cowd
+as a tub o' water?" he said.
+
+At last he took off his pit-trousers and donned decent black. 
+He did all this on the hearthrug, as he would have done if Annie
+and her familiar friends had been present.
+
+Mrs. Morel turned the bread in the oven.  Then from the red
+earthenware panchion of dough that stood in a corner she took
+another handful of paste, worked it to the proper shape, and dropped
+it into a tin.  As she was doing so Barker knocked and entered. 
+He was a quiet, compact little man, who looked as if he would go
+through a stone wall.  His black hair was cropped short, his head
+was bony.  Like most miners, he was pale, but healthy and taut.
+
+"Evenin', missis," he nodded to Mrs. Morel, and he seated
+himself with a sigh.
+
+"Good-evening," she replied cordially.
+
+"Tha's made thy heels crack," said Morel.
+
+"I dunno as I have," said Barker.
+
+He sat, as the men always did in Morel's kitchen,
+effacing himself rather.
+
+"How's missis?" she asked of him.
+
+He had told her some time back:
+
+"We're expectin' us third just now, you see."
+
+"Well," he answered, rubbing his head, "she keeps pretty
+middlin', I think."
+
+"Let's see--when?" asked Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Well, I shouldn't be surprised any time now."
+
+"Ah! And she's kept fairly?"
+
+"Yes, tidy."
+
+"That's a blessing, for she's none too strong."
+
+"No.  An' I've done another silly trick."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+Mrs. Morel knew Barker wouldn't do anything very silly.
+
+"I'm come be-out th' market-bag."
+
+"You can have mine."
+
+"Nay, you'll be wantin' that yourself."
+
+"I shan't. I take a string bag always."
+
+She saw the determined little collier buying in the week's
+groceries and meat on the Friday nights, and she admired him. 
+"Barker's little, but he's ten times the man you are," she said
+to her husband.
+
+Just then Wesson entered.  He was thin, rather frail-looking,
+with a boyish ingenuousness and a slightly foolish smile,
+despite his seven children.  But his wife was a passionate woman.
+
+"I see you've kested me," he said, smiling rather vapidly.
+
+"Yes," replied Barker.
+
+The newcomer took off his cap and his big woollen muffler. 
+His nose was pointed and red.
+
+"I'm afraid you're cold, Mr. Wesson," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"It's a bit nippy," he replied.
+
+"Then come to the fire."
+
+"Nay, I s'll do where I am."
+
+Both colliers sat away back.  They could not be induced to come
+on to the hearth.  The hearth is sacred to the family.
+
+"Go thy ways i' th' armchair," cried Morel cheerily.
+
+"Nay, thank yer; I'm very nicely here."
+
+"Yes, come, of course," insisted Mrs. Morel.
+
+He rose and went awkwardly.  He sat in Morel's armchair awkwardly. 
+It was too great a familiarity.  But the fire made him blissfully happy.
+
+"And how's that chest of yours?" demanded Mrs. Morel.
+
+He smiled again, with his blue eyes rather sunny.
+
+"Oh, it's very middlin'," he said.
+
+"Wi' a rattle in it like a kettle-drum," said Barker shortly.
+
+"T-t-t-t!" went Mrs. Morel rapidly with her tongue.  "Did you
+have that flannel singlet made?"
+
+"Not yet," he smiled.
+
+"Then, why didn't you?" she cried.
+
+"It'll come," he smiled.
+
+"Ah, an' Doomsday!" exclaimed Barker.
+
+Barker and Morel were both impatient of Wesson.  But, then,
+they were both as hard as nails, physically.
+
+When Morel was nearly ready he pushed the bag of money to Paul.
+
+"Count it, boy," he asked humbly.
+
+Paul impatiently turned from his books and pencil, tipped the bag
+upside down on the table.  There was a five-pound bag of silver,
+sovereigns and loose money.  He counted quickly, referred to the
+checks--the written papers giving amount of coal--put the money in order. 
+Then Barker glanced at the checks.
+
+Mrs. Morel went upstairs, and the three men came to table. 
+Morel, as master of the house, sat in his armchair, with his back
+to the hot fire.  The two butties had cooler seats.  None of them
+counted the money.
+
+"What did we say Simpson's was?" asked Morel; and the butties
+cavilled for a minute over the dayman's earnings.  Then the amount
+was put aside.
+
+"An' Bill Naylor's?"
+
+This money also was taken from the pack.
+
+Then, because Wesson lived in one of the company's houses,
+and his rent had been deducted, Morel and Barker took four-and-six each. 
+And because Morel's coals had come, and the leading was stopped,
+Barker and Wesson took four shillings each.  Then it was plain sailing. 
+Morel gave each of them a sovereign till there were no more sovereigns;
+each half a crown till there were no more half-crowns; each a shilling
+till there were no more shillings.  If there was anything at the end
+that wouldn't split, Morel took it and stood drinks.
+
+Then the three men rose and went.  Morel scuttled out of the house
+before his wife came down.  She heard the door close, and descended. 
+She looked hastily at the bread in the oven.  Then, glancing on
+the table, she saw her money lying.  Paul had been working all
+the time.  But now he felt his mother counting the week's money,
+and her wrath rising,
+
+"T-t-t-t-t!" went her tongue.
+
+He frowned.  He could not work when she was cross. 
+She counted again.
+
+"A measly twenty-five shillings!" she exclaimed.  "How much
+was the cheque?"
+
+"Ten pounds eleven," said Paul irritably.  He dreaded what
+was coming.
+
+"And he gives me a scrattlin' twenty-five, an'
+his club this week!  But I know him.  He thinks because
+YOU'RE earning he needn't keep the house any longer. 
+No, all he has to do with his money is to guttle it.  But I'll show him!"
+
+"Oh, mother, don't!" cried Paul.
+
+"Don't what, I should like to know?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Don't carry on again.  I can't work."
+
+She went very quiet.
+
+"Yes, it's all very well," she said; "but how do you think
+I'm going to manage?"
+
+"Well, it won't make it any better to whittle about it."
+
+"I should like to know what you'd do if you had it to put
+up with."
+
+"It won't be long.  You can have my money.  Let him go to hell."
+
+He went back to his work, and she tied her bonnet-strings grimly. 
+When she was fretted he could not bear it.  But now he began
+to insist on her recognizing him.
+
+"The two loaves at the top," she said, "will be done
+in twenty minutes.  Don't forget them."
+
+"All right," he answered; and she went to market.
+
+He remained alone working.  But his usual intense concentration
+became unsettled.  He listened for the yard-gate.  At a quarter-past
+seven came a low knock, and Miriam entered.
+
+"All alone?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+As if at home, she took off her tam-o'-shanter and her long coat,
+hanging them up.  It gave him a thrill.  This might be their own house,
+his and hers.  Then she came back and peered over his work.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Still design, for decorating stuffs, and for embroidery."
+
+She bent short-sightedly over the drawings.
+
+It irritated him that she peered so into everything that
+was his, searching him out.  He went into the parlour and returned
+with a bundle of brownish linen.  Carefully unfolding it,
+he spread it on the floor.  It proved to be a curtain or portiere,
+beautifully stencilled with a design on roses.
+
+"Ah, how beautiful!" she cried.
+
+The spread cloth, with its wonderful reddish roses and dark
+green stems, all so simple, and somehow so wicked-looking, lay at
+her feet.  She went on her knees before it, her dark curls dropping. 
+He saw her crouched voluptuously before his work, and his heart
+beat quickly.  Suddenly she looked up at him.
+
+"Why does it seem cruel?" she asked.
+
+"What?"
+
+"There seems a feeling of cruelty about it," she said.
+
+"It's jolly good, whether or not," he replied, folding up
+his work with a lover's hands.
+
+She rose slowly, pondering.
+
+"And what will you do with it?" she asked.
+
+"Send it to Liberty's.  I did it for my mother, but I think
+she'd rather have the money."
+
+"Yes," said Miriam.  He had spoken with a touch of bitterness,
+and Miriam sympathised.  Money would have been nothing to HER.
+
+He took the cloth back into the parlour.  When he returned
+he threw to Miriam a smaller piece.  It was a cushion-cover
+with the same design.
+
+"I did that for you," he said.
+
+She fingered the work with trembling hands, and did not speak. 
+He became embarrassed.
+
+"By Jove, the bread!" he cried.
+
+He took the top loaves out, tapped them vigorously.  They were done. 
+He put them on the hearth to cool.  Then he went to the scullery,
+wetted his hands, scooped the last white dough out of the punchion,
+and dropped it in a baking-tin.  Miriam was still bent over her
+painted cloth.  He stood rubbing the bits of dough from his hands.
+
+"You do like it?" he asked.
+
+She looked up at him, with her dark eyes one flame of love. 
+He laughed uncomfortably.  Then he began to talk about the design. 
+There was for him the most intense pleasure in talking about his
+work to Miriam.  All his passion, all his wild blood, went into
+this intercourse with her, when he talked and conceived his work. 
+She brought forth to him his imaginations.  She did not understand,
+any more than a woman understands when she conceives a child in her womb. 
+But this was life for her and for him.
+
+While they were talking, a young woman of about twenty-two,
+small and pale, hollow-eyed, yet with a relentless look about her,
+entered the room.  She was a friend at the Morel's.
+
+"Take your things off," said Paul.
+
+"No, I'm not stopping."
+
+She sat down in the armchair opposite Paul and Miriam,
+who were on the sofa.  Miriam moved a little farther from him. 
+The room was hot, with a scent of new bread.  Brown, crisp loaves
+stood on the hearth.
+
+"I shouldn't have expected to see you here to-night,
+Miriam Leivers," said Beatrice wickedly.
+
+"Why not?" murmured Miriam huskily.
+
+"Why, let's look at your shoes."
+
+Miriam remained uncomfortably still.
+
+"If tha doesna tha durs'na," laughed Beatrice.
+
+Miriam put her feet from under her dress.  Her boots
+had that queer, irresolute, rather pathetic look about them,
+which showed how self-conscious and self-mistrustful she was. 
+And they were covered with mud.
+
+"Glory!  You're a positive muck-heap," exclaimed Beatrice. 
+"Who cleans your boots?"
+
+"I clean them myself."
+
+"Then you wanted a job," said Beatrice.  "It would ha'
+taken a lot of men to ha' brought me down here to-night.  But love
+laughs at sludge, doesn't it, 'Postle my duck?"
+
+"Inter alia," he said.
+
+"Oh, Lord! are you going to spout foreign languages? 
+What does it mean, Miriam?"
+
+There was a fine sarcasm in the last question, but Miriam did
+not see it.
+
+"'Among other things,' I believe," she said humbly.
+
+Beatrice put her tongue between her teeth and laughed wickedly.
+
+"'Among other things,' 'Postle?" she repeated.  "Do you mean
+love laughs at mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and brothers,
+and men friends, and lady friends, and even at the b'loved himself?"
+
+She affected a great innocence.
+
+"In fact, it's one big smile," he replied.
+
+"Up its sleeve, 'Postle Morel--you believe me," she said;
+and she went off into another burst of wicked, silent laughter.
+
+Miriam sat silent, withdrawn into herself.  Every one of Paul's
+friends delighted in taking sides against her, and he left her
+in the lurch--seemed almost to have a sort of revenge upon her then.
+
+"Are you still at school?" asked Miriam of Beatrice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You've not had your notice, then?"
+
+"I expect it at Easter."
+
+"Isn't it an awful shame, to turn you off merely because you
+didn't pass the exam.?"
+
+"I don't know," said Beatrice coldly.
+
+"Agatha says you're as good as any teacher anywhere. 
+It seems to me ridiculous.  I wonder why you didn't pass."
+
+"Short of brains, eh, 'Postle?" said Beatrice briefly.
+
+"Only brains to bite with," replied Paul, laughing.
+
+"Nuisance!" she cried; and, springing from her seat,
+she rushed and boxed his ears.  She had beautiful small hands. 
+He held her wrists while she wrestled with him.  At last she
+broke free, and seized two handfuls of his thick, dark brown hair,
+which she shook.
+
+"Beat!" he said, as he pulled his hair straight with his fingers. 
+"I hate you!"
+
+She laughed with glee.
+
+"Mind!" she said.  "I want to sit next to you."
+
+"I'd as lief be neighbours with a vixen," he said,
+nevertheless making place for her between him and Miriam.
+
+"Did it ruffle his pretty hair, then!" she cried; and, with her
+hair-comb, she combed him straight.  "And his nice little moustache!"
+she exclaimed.  She tilted his head back and combed his young moustache. 
+"It's a wicked moustache, 'Postle," she said.  "It's a red for danger. 
+Have you got any of those cigarettes?"
+
+He pulled his cigarette-case from his pocket.  Beatrice looked
+inside it.
+
+"And fancy me having Connie's last cig.," said Beatrice,
+putting the thing between her teeth.  He held a lit match to her,
+and she puffed daintily.
+
+"Thanks so much, darling," she said mockingly.
+
+It gave her a wicked delight.
+
+"Don't you think he does it nicely, Miriam?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, very!" said Miriam.
+
+He took a cigarette for himself.
+
+"Light, old boy?" said Beatrice, tilting her cigarette at him.
+
+He bent forward to her to light his cigarette at hers. 
+She was winking at him as he did so.  Miriam saw his eyes trembling
+with mischief, and his full, almost sensual, mouth quivering. 
+He was not himself, and she could not bear it.  As he was now,
+she had no connection with him; she might as well not have existed. 
+She saw the cigarette dancing on his full red lips.  She hated his thick
+hair for being tumbled loose on his forehead.
+
+"Sweet boy!" said Beatrice, tipping up his chin and giving
+him a little kiss on the cheek.
+
+"I s'll kiss thee back, Beat," he said.
+
+"Tha wunna!" she giggled, jumping up and going away. 
+"Isn't he shameless, Miriam?"
+
+"Quite," said Miriam.  "By the way, aren't you forgetting
+the bread?"
+
+"By Jove!" he cried, flinging open the oven door.
+
+Out puffed the bluish smoke and a smell of burned bread.
+
+"Oh, golly!" cried Beatrice, coming to his side.  He crouched
+before the oven, she peered over his shoulder.  "This is what comes
+of the oblivion of love, my boy."
+
+Paul was ruefully removing the loaves.  One was burnt black
+on the hot side; another was hard as a brick.
+
+"Poor mater!" said Paul.
+
+"You want to grate it," said Beatrice.  "Fetch me the nutmeg-grater."
+
+She arranged the bread in the oven.  He brought the grater,
+and she grated the bread on to a newspaper on the table. 
+He set the doors open to blow away the smell of burned bread. 
+Beatrice grated away, puffing her cigarette, knocking the charcoal off
+the poor loaf.
+
+"My word, Miriam! you're in for it this time," said Beatrice.
+
+"I!" exclaimed Miriam in amazement.
+
+"You'd better be gone when his mother comes in.  I know why
+King Alfred burned the cakes.  Now I see it!  'Postle would fix up
+a tale about his work making him forget, if he thought it would wash. 
+If that old woman had come in a bit sooner, she'd have boxed the
+brazen thing's ears who made the oblivion, instead of poor Alfred's."
+
+She giggled as she scraped the loaf.  Even Miriam laughed
+in spite of herself.  Paul mended the fire ruefully.
+
+The garden gate was heard to bang.
+
+"Quick!" cried Beatrice, giving Paul the scraped loaf. 
+"Wrap it up in a damp towel."
+
+Paul disappeared into the scullery.  Beatrice hastily
+blew her scrapings into the fire, and sat down innocently. 
+Annie came bursting in.  She was an abrupt, quite smart young woman. 
+She blinked in the strong light.
+
+"Smell of burning!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It's the cigarettes," replied Beatrice demurely.
+
+"Where's Paul?"
+
+Leonard had followed Annie.  He had a long comic face
+and blue eyes, very sad.
+
+"I suppose he's left you to settle it between you," he said. 
+He nodded sympathetically to Miriam, and became gently sarcastic
+to Beatrice.
+
+"No," said Beatrice, "he's gone off with number nine."
+
+"I just met number five inquiring for him," said Leonard.
+
+"Yes--we're going to share him up like Solomon's baby,"
+said Beatrice.
+
+Annie laughed.
+
+"Oh, ay," said Leonard.  "And which bit should you have?"
+
+"I don't know," said Beatrice.  "I'll let all the others
+pick first."
+
+"An' you'd have the leavings, like?" said Leonard, twisting up
+a comic face.
+
+Annie was looking in the oven.  Miriam sat ignored. 
+Paul entered.
+
+"This bread's a fine sight, our Paul," said Annie.
+
+"Then you should stop an' look after it," said Paul.
+
+"You mean YOU should do what you're reckoning to do,"
+replied Annie.
+
+"He should, shouldn't he!" cried Beatrice.
+
+"I s'd think he'd got plenty on hand," said Leonard.
+
+"You had a nasty walk, didn't you, Miriam?" said Annie.
+
+"Yes--but I'd been in all week---"
+
+"And you wanted a bit of a change, like," insinuated Leonard kindly.
+
+"Well, you can't be stuck in the house for ever," Annie agreed. 
+She was quite amiable.  Beatrice pulled on her coat, and went out
+with Leonard and Annie.  She would meet her own boy.
+
+"Don't forget that bread, our Paul," cried Annie. 
+"Good-night, Miriam.  I don't think it will rain."
+
+When they had all gone, Paul fetched the swathed loaf,
+unwrapped it, and surveyed it sadly.
+
+"It's a mess!" he said.
+
+"But," answered Miriam impatiently, "what is it,
+after all--twopence, ha'penny."
+
+"Yes, but--it's the mater's precious baking, and she'll take
+it to heart.  However, it's no good bothering."
+
+He took the loaf back into the scullery.  There was a little
+distance between him and Miriam.  He stood balanced opposite her for
+some moments considering, thinking of his behaviour with Beatrice. 
+He felt guilty inside himself, and yet glad.  For some inscrutable
+reason it served Miriam right.  He was not going to repent. 
+She wondered what he was thinking of as he stood suspended. 
+His thick hair was tumbled over his forehead.  Why might she not
+push it back for him, and remove the marks of Beatrice's comb? 
+Why might she not press his body with her two hands.  It looked
+so firm, and every whit living.  And he would let other girls,
+why not her?
+
+Suddenly he started into life.  It made her quiver almost
+with terror as he quickly pushed the hair off his forehead and came
+towards her.
+
+"Half-past eight!" he said.  "We'd better buck up. 
+Where's your French?"
+
+Miriam shyly and rather bitterly produced her exercise-book.
+Every week she wrote for him a sort of diary of her inner life,
+in her own French.  He had found this was the only way to get her
+to do compositions.  And her diary was mostly a love-letter.  He
+would read it now; she felt as if her soul's history were going
+to be desecrated by him in his present mood.  He sat beside her. 
+She watched his hand, firm and warm, rigorously scoring her work. 
+He was reading only the French, ignoring her soul that was there. 
+But gradually his hand forgot its work.  He read in silence, motionless. 
+She quivered.
+
+"'Ce matin les oiseaux m'ont eveille,'" he read.  "'Il faisait
+encore un crepuscule.  Mais la petite fenetre de ma chambre etait bleme,
+et puis, jaune, et tous les oiseaux du bois eclaterent dans un chanson
+vif et resonnant.  Toute l'aube tressaillit.  J'avais reve de vous. 
+Est-ce que vous voyez aussi l'aube?  Les oiseaux m'eveillent presque
+tous les matins, et toujours il y a quelque chose de terreur dans
+le cri des grives.  Il est si clair---'"
+
+Miriam sat tremulous, half ashamed.  He remained quite still,
+trying to understand.  He only knew she loved him.  He was afraid
+of her love for him.  It was too good for him, and he was inadequate. 
+His own love was at fault, not hers.  Ashamed, he corrected her work,
+humbly writing above her words.
+
+"Look," he said quietly, "the past participle conjugated
+with avoir agrees with the direct object when it precedes."
+
+She bent forward, trying to see and to understand.  Her free,
+fine curls tickled his face.  He started as if they had been red hot,
+shuddering.  He saw her peering forward at the page, her red lips parted
+piteously, the black hair springing in fine strands across her tawny,
+ruddy cheek.  She was coloured like a pomegranate for richness. 
+His breath came short as he watched her.  Suddenly she looked up at him. 
+Her dark eyes were naked with their love, afraid, and yearning. 
+His eyes, too, were dark, and they hurt her.  They seemed to master her. 
+She lost all her self-control, was exposed in fear.  And he knew,
+before he could kiss her, he must drive something out of himself. 
+And a touch of hate for her crept back again into his heart. 
+He returned to her exercise.
+
+Suddenly he flung down the pencil, and was at the oven
+in a leap, turning the bread.  For Miriam he was too quick. 
+She started violently, and it hurt her with real pain.  Even the way
+he crouched before the oven hurt her.  There seemed to be something
+cruel in it, something cruel in the swift way he pitched the bread
+out of the tins, caught it up again.  If only he had been gentle
+in his movements she would have felt so rich and warm.  As it was,
+she was hurt.
+
+He returned and finished the exercise.
+
+"You've done well this week," he said.
+
+She saw he was flattered by her diary.  It did not repay
+her entirely.
+
+"You really do blossom out sometimes," he said.  "You ought
+to write poetry."
+
+She lifted her head with joy, then she shook it mistrustfully.
+
+"I don't trust myself," she said.
+
+"You should try!"
+
+Again she shook her head.
+
+"Shall we read, or is it too late?" he asked.
+
+"It is late--but we can read just a little," she pleaded.
+
+She was really getting now the food for her life during
+the next week.  He made her copy Baudelaire's "Le Balcon".  Then he
+read it for her.  His voice was soft and caressing, but growing
+almost brutal.  He had a way of lifting his lips and showing
+his teeth, passionately and bitterly, when he was much moved. 
+This he did now.  It made Miriam feel as if he were trampling on her. 
+She dared not look at him, but sat with her head bowed.  She could
+not understand why he got into such a tumult and fury.  It made her wretched. 
+She did not like Baudelaire, on the whole--nor Verlaine.
+
+      "Behold her singing in the field
+      Yon solitary highland lass."
+
+That nourished her heart.  So did "Fair Ines". And--
+
+      "It was a beauteous evening, calm and pure,
+      And breathing holy quiet like a nun."
+
+These were like herself.  And there was he, saying in his
+throat bitterly:
+
+      "Tu te rappelleras la beaute des caresses."
+
+The poem was finished; he took the bread out of the oven,
+arranging the burnt loaves at the bottom of the panchion,
+the good ones at the top.  The desiccated loaf remained swathed
+up in the scullery.
+
+"Mater needn't know till morning," he said.  "It won't upset
+her so much then as at night."
+
+Miriam looked in the bookcase, saw what postcards and letters
+he had received, saw what books were there.  She took one that had
+interested him.  Then he turned down the gas and they set off. 
+He did not trouble to lock the door.
+
+He was not home again until a quarter to eleven.  His mother
+was seated in the rocking-chair.  Annie, with a rope of hair hanging
+down her back, remained sitting on a low stool before the fire,
+her elbows on her knees, gloomily.  On the table stood the offending
+loaf unswathed.  Paul entered rather breathless.  No one spoke. 
+His mother was reading the little local newspaper.  He took off
+his coat, and went to sit down on the sofa.  His mother moved curtly
+aside to let him pass.  No one spoke.  He was very uncomfortable. 
+For some minutes he sat pretending to read a piece of paper he found on
+the table.  Then---
+
+"I forgot that bread, mother," he said.
+
+There was no answer from either woman.
+
+"Well," he said, "it's only twopence ha'penny. I can pay you
+for that."
+
+Being angry, he put three pennies on the table and slid
+them towards his mother.  She turned away her head.  Her mouth
+was shut tightly.
+
+"Yes," said Annie, "you don't know how badly my mother is!"
+
+The girl sat staring glumly into the fire.
+
+"Why is she badly?" asked Paul, in his overbearing way.
+
+"Well!" said Annie.  "She could scarcely get home."
+
+He looked closely at his mother.  She looked ill.
+
+"WHY could you scarcely get home?" he asked her, still sharply. 
+She would not answer.
+
+"I found her as white as a sheet sitting here," said Annie,
+with a suggestion of tears in her voice.
+
+"Well, WHY?" insisted Paul.  His brows were knitting, his eyes
+dilating passionately.
+
+"It was enough to upset anybody," said Mrs. Morel, "hugging
+those parcels--meat, and green-groceries, and a pair of curtains---"
+
+"Well, why DID you hug them; you needn't have done."
+
+"Then who would?"
+
+"Let Annie fetch the meat."
+
+"Yes, and I WOULD fetch the meat, but how was I to know. 
+You were off with Miriam, instead of being in when my mother came."
+
+"And what was the matter with you?" asked Paul of his mother.
+
+"I suppose it's my heart," she replied.  Certainly she looked
+bluish round the mouth.
+
+"And have you felt it before?"
+
+"Yes--often enough."
+
+"Then why haven't you told me?--and why haven't you seen a doctor?"
+
+Mrs. Morel shifted in her chair, angry with him for his hectoring.
+
+"You'd never notice anything," said Annie.  "You're too eager
+to be off with Miriam."
+
+"Oh, am I--and any worse than you with Leonard?"
+
+"I was in at a quarter to ten."
+
+There was silence in the room for a time.
+
+"I should have thought," said Mrs. Morel bitterly, "that she
+wouldn't have occupied you so entirely as to burn a whole ovenful
+of bread."
+
+"Beatrice was here as well as she."
+
+"Very likely.  But we know why the bread is spoilt."
+
+"Why?" he flashed.
+
+"Because you were engrossed with Miriam," replied Mrs. Morel hotly.
+
+"Oh, very well--then it was NOT!" he replied angrily.
+
+He was distressed and wretched.  Seizing a paper, he began
+to read.  Annie, her blouse unfastened, her long ropes of hair twisted
+into a plait, went up to bed, bidding him a very curt good-night.
+
+Paul sat pretending to read.  He knew his mother wanted
+to upbraid him.  He also wanted to know what had made her ill,
+for he was troubled.  So, instead of running away to bed, as he would
+have liked to do, he sat and waited.  There was a tense silence. 
+The clock ticked loudly.
+
+"You'd better go to bed before your father comes in," said the
+mother harshly.  "And if you're going to have anything to eat,
+you'd better get it."
+
+"I don't want anything."
+
+It was his mother's custom to bring him some trifle for
+supper on Friday night, the night of luxury for the colliers. 
+He was too angry to go and find it in the pantry this night. 
+This insulted her.
+
+"If I WANTED you to go to Selby on Friday night, I can imagine
+the scene," said Mrs. Morel.  "But you're never too tired to go
+if SHE will come for you.  Nay, you neither want to eat nor drink then."
+
+"I can't let her go alone."
+
+"Can't you?  And why does she come?"
+
+"Not because I ask her."
+
+"She doesn't come without you want her---"
+
+"Well, what if I DO want her---" he replied.
+
+"Why, nothing, if it was sensible or reasonable.  But to go
+trapseing up there miles and miles in the mud, coming home at midnight,
+and got to go to Nottingham in the morning---"
+
+"If I hadn't, you'd be just the same."
+
+"Yes, I should, because there's no sense in it. 
+Is she so fascinating that you must follow her all that way?" 
+Mrs. Morel was bitterly sarcastic.  She sat still, with averted face,
+stroking with a rhythmic, jerked movement, the black sateen
+of her apron.  It was a movement that hurt Paul to see.
+
+"I do like her," he said, "but---"
+
+"LIKE her!" said Mrs. Morel, in the same biting tones.  "It seems
+to me you like nothing and nobody else.  There's neither Annie,
+nor me, nor anyone now for you."
+
+"What nonsense, mother--you know I don't love her--I--I tell
+you I DON'T love her--she doesn't even walk with my arm, because I
+don't want her to."
+
+"Then why do you fly to her so often?"
+
+"I DO like to talk to her--I never said I didn't.  But I DON'T
+love her."
+
+"Is there nobody else to talk to?"
+
+"Not about the things we talk of.  There's a lot of things
+that you're not interested in, that---"
+
+"What things?"
+
+Mrs. Morel was so intense that Paul began to pant.
+
+"Why--painting--and books.  YOU don't care about Herbert Spencer."
+
+"No," was the sad reply.  "And YOU won't at my age."
+
+"Well, but I do now--and Miriam does---"
+
+"And how do you know," Mrs. Morel flashed defiantly, "that I
+shouldn't.  Do you ever try me!"
+
+"But you don't, mother, you know you don't care whether
+a picture's decorative or not; you don't care what MANNER it is in."
+
+"How do you know I don't care?  Do you ever try me?  Do you
+ever talk to me about these things, to try?"
+
+"But it's not that that matters to you, mother, you know
+t's not."
+
+"What is it, then--what is it, then, that matters to me?"
+she flashed.  He knitted his brows with pain.
+
+"You're old, mother, and we're young."
+
+He only meant that the interests of HER age were not the
+interests of his.  But he realised the moment he had spoken
+that he had said the wrong thing.
+
+"Yes, I know it well--I am old.  And therefore I may stand aside;
+I have nothing more to do with you.  You only want me to wait on
+you--the rest is for Miriam."
+
+He could not bear it.  Instinctively he realised that he
+was life to her.  And, after all, she was the chief thing to him,
+the only supreme thing.
+
+"You know it isn't, mother, you know it isn't!"
+
+She was moved to pity by his cry.
+
+"It looks a great deal like it," she said, half putting aside
+her despair.
+
+"No, mother--I really DON'T love her.  I talk to her, but I
+want to come home to you."
+
+He had taken off his collar and tie, and rose, bare-throated,
+to go to bed.  As he stooped to kiss his mother, she threw her
+arms round his neck, hid her face on his shoulder, and cried,
+in a whimpering voice, so unlike her own that he writhed in agony:
+
+"I can't bear it.  I could let another woman--but not her. 
+She'd leave me no room, not a bit of room---"
+
+And immediately he hated Miriam bitterly.
+
+"And I've never--you know, Paul--I've never had a husband--not really---"
+
+He stroked his mother's hair, and his mouth was on her throat.
+
+"And she exults so in taking you from me--she's not like
+ordinary girls."
+
+"Well, I don't love her, mother," he murmured, bowing his head
+and hiding his eyes on her shoulder in misery.  His mother kissed
+him a long, fervent kiss.
+
+"My boy!" she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love.
+
+Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.
+
+"There," said his mother, "now go to bed.  You'll be so tired
+in the morning."  As she was speaking she heard her husband coming. 
+"There's your father--now go."  Suddenly she looked at him almost
+as if in fear.  "Perhaps I'm selfish.  If you want her, take her,
+my boy."
+
+His mother looked so strange, Paul kissed her, trembling.
+
+"Ha--mother!" he said softly.
+
+Morel came in, walking unevenly.  His hat was over one corner
+of his eye.  He balanced in the doorway.
+
+"At your mischief again?" he said venomously.
+
+Mrs. Morel's emotion turned into sudden hate of the drunkard
+who had come in thus upon her.
+
+"At any rate, it is sober," she said.
+
+"H'm--h'm! h'm--h'm!" he sneered.  He went into the passage,
+hung up his hat and coat.  Then they heard him go down three steps
+to the pantry.  He returned with a piece of pork-pie in his fist. 
+It was what Mrs. Morel had bought for her son.
+
+"Nor was that bought for you.  If you can give me no more than
+twenty-five shillings, I'm sure I'm not going to buy you pork-pie
+to stuff, after you've swilled a bellyful of beer."
+
+"Wha-at--wha-at!" snarled Morel, toppling in his balance. 
+"Wha-at--not for me?"  He looked at the piece of meat and crust,
+and suddenly, in a vicious spurt of temper, flung it into the fire.
+
+Paul started to his feet.
+
+"Waste your own stuff!" he cried.
+
+"What--what!" suddenly shouted Morel, jumping up and clenching
+his fist.  "I'll show yer, yer young jockey!"
+
+"All right!" said Paul viciously, putting his head on one side. 
+"Show me!"
+
+He would at that moment dearly have loved to have a smack
+at something.  Morel was half crouching, fists up, ready to spring. 
+The young man stood, smiling with his lips.
+
+"Ussha!" hissed the father, swiping round with a great stroke
+just past his son's face.  He dared not, even though so close,
+really touch the young man, but swerved an inch away.
+
+"Right!" said Paul, his eyes upon the side of his father's
+mouth, where in another instant his fist would have hit. 
+He ached for that stroke.  But he heard a faint moan from behind. 
+His mother was deadly pale and dark at the mouth.  Morel was
+dancing up to deliver another blow.
+
+"Father!" said Paul, so that the word rang.
+
+Morel started, and stood at attention.
+
+"Mother!" moaned the boy.  "Mother!"
+
+She began to struggle with herself.  Her open eyes watched him,
+although she could not move.  Gradually she was coming to herself. 
+He laid her down on the sofa, and ran upstairs for a little whisky,
+which at last she could sip.  The tears were hopping down his face. 
+As he kneeled in front of her he did not cry, but the tears ran
+down his face quickly.  Morel, on the opposite side of the room,
+sat with his elbows on his knees glaring across.
+
+"What's a-matter with 'er?" he asked.
+
+"Faint!" replied Paul.
+
+"H'm!"
+
+The elderly man began to unlace his boots.  He stumbled off
+to bed.  His last fight was fought in that home.
+
+Paul kneeled there, stroking his mother's hand.
+
+"Don't be poorly, mother--don't be poorly!" he said time
+after time.
+
+"It's nothing, my boy," she murmured.
+
+At last he rose, fetched in a large piece of coal, and raked
+the fire.  Then he cleared the room, put everything straight,
+laid the things for breakfast, and brought his mother's candle.
+
+"Can you go to bed, mother?"
+
+"Yes, I'll come."
+
+"Sleep with Annie, mother, not with him."
+
+"No. I'll sleep in my own bed."
+
+"Don't sleep with him, mother."
+
+"I'll sleep in my own bed."
+
+She rose, and he turned out the gas, then followed her closely
+upstairs, carrying her candle.  On the landing he kissed her close.
+
+"Good-night, mother."
+
+"Good-night!" she said.
+
+He pressed his face upon the pillow in a fury of misery. 
+And yet, somewhere in his soul, he was at peace because he still
+loved his mother best.  It was the bitter peace of resignation.
+
+The efforts of his father to conciliate him next day were
+a great humiliation to him.
+
+Everybody tried to forget the scene.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+DEFEAT OF MIRIAM
+
+PAUL was dissatisfied with himself and with everything. 
+The deepest of his love belonged to his mother.  When he felt he
+had hurt her, or wounded his love for her, he could not bear it. 
+Now it was spring, and there was battle between him and Miriam. 
+This year he had a good deal against her.  She was vaguely aware
+of it.  The old feeling that she was to be a sacrifice to this love,
+which she had had when she prayed, was mingled in all her emotions. 
+She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him.  She did
+not believe in herself primarily:  doubted whether she could ever
+be what he would demand of her.  Certainly she never saw herself
+living happily through a lifetime with him.  She saw tragedy, sorrow,
+and sacrifice ahead.  And in sacrifice she
+was proud, in renunciation she was strong, for she did not trust
+herself to support everyday life.  She was prepared for the big
+things and the deep things, like tragedy.  It was the sufficiency
+of the small day-life she could not trust.
+
+The Easter holidays began happily.  Paul was his own frank self. 
+Yet she felt it would go wrong.  On the Sunday afternoon she stood
+at her bedroom window, looking across at the oak-trees of the wood,
+in whose branches a twilight was tangled, below the bright sky
+of the afternoon.  Grey-green rosettes of honeysuckle leaves
+hung before the window, some already, she fancied, showing bud. 
+It was spring, which she loved and dreaded.
+
+Hearing the clack of the gate she stood in suspense. 
+It was a bright grey day.  Paul came into the yard with his bicycle,
+which glittered as he walked.  Usually he rang his bell and laughed
+towards the house.  To-day he walked with shut lips and cold,
+cruel bearing, that had something of a slouch and a sneer in it. 
+She knew him well by now, and could tell from that keen-looking,
+aloof young body of his what was happening inside him.  There was
+a cold correctness in the way he put his bicycle in its place,
+that made her heart sink.
+
+She came downstairs nervously.  She was wearing a new net blouse
+that she thought became her.  It had a high collar with a tiny ruff,
+reminding her of Mary, Queen of Scots, and making her, she thought,
+look wonderfully a woman, and dignified.  At twenty she was
+full-breasted and luxuriously formed.  Her face was still like a soft
+rich mask, unchangeable.  But her eyes, once lifted, were wonderful. 
+She was afraid of him.  He would notice her new blouse.
+
+He, being in a hard, ironical mood, was entertaining the family
+to a description of a service given in the Primitive Methodist Chapel,
+conducted by one of the well-known preachers of the sect. 
+He sat at the head of the table, his mobile face, with the eyes
+that could be so beautiful, shining with tenderness or dancing
+with laughter, now taking on one expression and then another,
+in imitation of various people he was mocking.  His mockery
+always hurt her; it was too near the reality.  He was too clever
+and cruel.  She felt that when his eyes were like this, hard with
+mocking hate, he would spare neither himself nor anybody else. 
+But Mrs. Leivers was wiping her eyes with laughter, and Mr. Leivers,
+just awake from his Sunday nap, was rubbing his head in amusement. 
+The three brothers sat with ruffled, sleepy appearance in their
+shirt-sleeves, giving a guffaw from time to time.  The whole
+family loved a "take-off" more than anything.
+
+He took no notice of Miriam.  Later, she saw him remark
+her new blouse, saw that the artist approved, but it won from
+him not a spark of warmth.  She was nervous, could hardly reach
+the teacups from the shelves.
+
+When the men went out to milk, she ventured to address
+him personally.
+
+"You were late," she said.
+
+"Was I?" he answered.
+
+There was silence for a while.
+
+"Was it rough riding?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't notice it."  She continued quickly to lay the table. 
+When she had finished---
+
+"Tea won't be for a few minutes.  Will you come and look
+at the daffodils?" she said.
+
+He rose without answering.  They went out into the back garden under
+the budding damson-trees.  The hills and the sky were clean and cold. 
+Everything looked washed, rather hard.  Miriam glanced at Paul. 
+He was pale and impassive.  It seemed cruel to her that his eyes
+and brows, which she loved, could look so hurting.
+
+"Has the wind made you tired?" she asked.  She detected
+an underneath feeling of weariness about him.
+
+"No, I think not," he answered.
+
+"It must be rough on the road--the wood moans so."
+
+"You can see by the clouds it's a south-west wind; that helps
+me here."
+
+"You see, I don't cycle, so I don't understand," she murmured.
+
+"Is there need to cycle to know that!" he said.
+
+She thought his sarcasms were unnecessary.  They went forward
+in silence.  Round the wild, tussocky lawn at the back of the house
+was a thorn hedge, under which daffodils were craning forward from
+among their sheaves of grey-green blades.  The cheeks of the flowers
+were greenish with cold.  But still some had burst, and their gold
+ruffled and glowed.  Miriam went on her knees before one cluster,
+took a wild-looking daffodil between her hands, turned up its
+face of gold to her, and bowed down, caressing it with her mouth
+and cheeks and brow.  He stood aside, with his hands in his pockets,
+watching her.  One after another she turned up to him the faces
+of the yellow, bursten flowers appealingly, fondling them lavishly
+all the while.
+
+"Aren't they magnificent?" she murmured.
+
+"Magnificent!  It's a bit thick--they're pretty!"
+
+She bowed again to her flowers at his censure of her praise. 
+He watched her crouching, sipping the flowers with fervid kisses.
+
+"Why must you always be fondling things?" he said irritably.
+
+"But I love to touch them," she replied, hurt.
+
+"Can you never like things without clutching them as if you
+wanted to pull the heart out of them?  Why don't you have a bit
+more restraint, or reserve, or something?"
+
+She looked up at him full of pain, then continued slowly
+to stroke her lips against a ruffled flower.  Their scent, as she
+smelled it, was so much kinder than he; it almost made her cry.
+
+"You wheedle the soul out of things," he said.  "I would
+never wheedle--at any rate, I'd go straight."
+
+He scarcely knew what he was saying.  These things came from
+him mechanically.  She looked at him.  His body seemed one weapon,
+firm and hard against her.
+
+"You're always begging things to love you," he said, "as if you
+were a beggar for love.  Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them---"
+
+Rhythmically, Miriam was swaying and stroking the flower with
+her mouth, inhaling the scent which ever after made her shudder
+as it came to her nostrils.
+
+"You don't want to love--your eternal and abnormal craving
+is to be loved.  You aren't positive, you're negative. 
+You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love,
+because you've got a shortage somewhere."
+
+She was stunned by his cruelty, and did not hear.  He had not
+the faintest notion of what he was saying.  It was as if his fretted,
+tortured soul, run hot by thwarted passion, jetted off these sayings
+like sparks from electricity.  She did not grasp anything he said. 
+She only sat crouched beneath his cruelty and his hatred of her. 
+She never realised in a flash.  Over everything she brooded
+and brooded.
+
+After tea he stayed with Edgar and the brothers, taking no
+notice of Miriam.  She, extremely unhappy on this looked-for holiday,
+waited for him.  And at last he yielded and came to her. 
+She was determined to track this mood of his to its origin. 
+She counted it not much more than a mood.
+
+"Shall we go through the wood a little way?" she asked him,
+knowing he never refused a direct request.
+
+They went down to the warren.  On the middle path they
+passed a trap, a narrow horseshoe hedge of small fir-boughs,
+baited with the guts of a rabbit.  Paul glanced at it frowning. 
+She caught his eye.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know!  Is it worse than a weasel with its teeth in a
+rabbit's throat?  One weasel or many rabbits?  One or the other must go!"
+
+He was taking the bitterness of life badly.  She was rather
+sorry for him.
+
+"We will go back to the house," he said.  "I don't want
+to walk out."
+
+They went past the lilac-tree, whose bronze leaf-buds were
+coming unfastened.  Just a fragment remained of the haystack,
+a monument squared and brown, like a pillar of stone.  There was
+a little bed of hay from the last cutting.
+
+"Let us sit here a minute," said Miriam.
+
+He sat down against his will, resting his back against the hard
+wall of hay.  They faced the amphitheatre of round hills that glowed
+with sunset, tiny white farms standing out, the meadows golden,
+the woods dark and yet luminous, tree-tops folded over tree-tops,
+distinct in the distance.  The evening had cleared, and the east
+was tender with a magenta flush under which the land lay still
+and rich.
+
+"Isn't it beautiful?" she pleaded.
+
+But he only scowled.  He would rather have had it ugly just then.
+
+At that moment a big bull-terrier came rushing up, open-mouthed,
+pranced his two paws on the youth's shoulders, licking his face. 
+Paul drew back, laughing.  Bill was a great relief to him. 
+He pushed the dog aside, but it came leaping back.
+
+"Get out," said the lad, "or I'll dot thee one."
+
+But the dog was not to be pushed away.  So Paul had a little
+battle with the creature, pitching poor Bill away from him, who,
+however, only floundered tumultuously back again, wild with joy. 
+The two fought together, the man laughing grudgingly, the dog
+grinning all over.  Miriam watched them.  There was something pathetic
+about the man.  He wanted so badly to love, to be tender. 
+The rough way he bowled the dog over was really loving.  Bill got up,
+panting with happiness, his brown eyes rolling in his white face,
+and lumbered back again.  He adored Paul.  The lad frowned.
+
+"Bill, I've had enough o' thee," he said.
+
+But the dog only stood with two heavy paws, that quivered
+with love, upon his thigh, and flickered a red tongue at him. 
+He drew back.
+
+"No," he said--"no--I've had enough."
+
+And in a minute the dog trotted off happily, to vary the fun.
+
+He remained staring miserably across at the hills, whose still
+beauty he begrudged.  He wanted to go and cycle with Edgar. 
+Yet he had not the courage to leave Miriam.
+
+"Why are you sad?" she asked humbly.
+
+"I'm not sad; why should I be," he answered.  "I'm only normal."
+
+She wondered why he always claimed to be normal when he
+was disagreeable.
+
+"But what is the matter?" she pleaded, coaxing him soothingly.
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"Nay!" she murmured.
+
+He picked up a stick and began to stab the earth with it.
+
+"You'd far better not talk," he said.
+
+"But I wish to know---" she replied.
+
+He laughed resentfully.
+
+"You always do," he said.
+
+"It's not fair to me," she murmured.
+
+He thrust, thrust, thrust at the ground with the pointed stick,
+digging up little clods of earth as if he were in a fever of irritation. 
+She gently and firmly laid her band on his wrist.
+
+"Don't!" she said.  "Put it away."
+
+He flung the stick into the currant-bushes, and leaned back. 
+Now he was bottled up.
+
+"What is it?" she pleaded softly.
+
+He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full
+of torment.
+
+"You know," he said at length, rather wearily--"you know--we'd
+better break off."
+
+It was what she dreaded.  Swiftly everything seemed to darken
+before her eyes.
+
+"Why!" she murmured.  "What has happened?"
+
+"Nothing has happened.  We only realise where we are. 
+It's no good---"
+
+She waited in silence, sadly, patiently.  It was no good being
+impatient with him.  At any rate, he would tell her now what ailed him.
+
+"We agreed on friendship," he went on in a dull, monotonous voice. 
+"How often HAVE we agreed for friendship!  And yet--it neither
+stops there, nor gets anywhere else."
+
+He was silent again.  She brooded.  What did he mean? 
+He was so wearying.  There was something he would not yield. 
+Yet she must be patient with him.
+
+"I can only give friendship--it's all I'm capable of--it's
+a flaw in my make-up.  The thing overbalances to one side--I hate
+a toppling balance.  Let us have done."
+
+There was warmth of fury in his last phrases.  He meant she
+loved him more than he her.  Perhaps he could not love her. 
+Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted.  It was the
+deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she
+dared neither realise nor acknowledge.  Perhaps she was deficient. 
+Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back.  If it were so,
+she would do without him.  She would never let herself want him. 
+She would merely see.
+
+"But what has happened?" she said.
+
+"Nothing--it's all in myself--it only comes out just now. 
+We're always like this towards Easter-time."
+
+He grovelled so helplessly, she pitied him.  At least she
+never floundered in such a pitiable way.  After all, it was he
+who was chiefly humiliated.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked him.
+
+"Why--I mustn't come often--that's all.  Why should I monopolise
+you when I'm not--- You see, I'm deficient in something with regard
+to you---"
+
+He was telling her he did not love her, and so ought to leave her
+a chance with another man.  How foolish and blind and shamefully clumsy
+he was!  What were other men to her!  What were men to her at all! 
+But he, ah! she loved his soul.  Was HE deficient in something? 
+Perhaps he was.
+
+"But I don't understand," she said huskily.  "Yesterday---"
+
+The night was turning jangled and hateful to him as the
+twilight faded.  And she bowed under her suffering.
+
+"I know," he cried, "you never will!  You'll never believe that
+I can't--can't physically, any more than I can fly up like a skylark---"
+
+"What?" she murmured.  Now she dreaded.
+
+"Love you."
+
+He hated her bitterly at that moment because he made her suffer. 
+Love her!  She knew he loved her.  He really belonged to her. 
+This about not loving her, physically, bodily, was a mere perversity
+on his part, because he knew she loved him.  He was stupid like
+a child.  He belonged to her.  His soul wanted her.  She guessed
+somebody had been influencing him.  She felt upon him the hardness,
+the foreignness of another influence.
+
+"What have they been saying at home?" she asked.
+
+"It's not that," he answered.
+
+And then she knew it was.  She despised them for their commonness,
+his people.  They did not know what things were really worth.
+
+He and she talked very little more that night.  After all he
+left her to cycle with Edgar.
+
+He had come back to his mother.  Hers was the strongest
+tie in his life.  When he thought round, Miriam shrank away. 
+There was a vague, unreal feel about her.  And nobody else mattered. 
+There was one place in the world that stood solid and did not melt
+into unreality:  the place where his mother was.  Everybody else
+could grow shadowy, almost non-existent to him, but she could not. 
+It was as if the pivot and pole of his life, from which he could
+not escape, was his mother.
+
+And in the same way she waited for him.  In him was established
+her life now.  After all, the life beyond offered very little to
+Mrs. Morel.  She saw that our chance for DOING is here, and doing
+counted with her.  Paul was going to prove that she had been right;
+he was going to make a man whom nothing should shift off his feet;
+he was going to alter the face of the earth in some way which mattered. 
+Wherever he went she felt her soul went with him.  Whatever he did she
+felt her soul stood by him, ready, as it were, to hand him his tools. 
+She could not bear it when he was with Miriam.  William was dead. 
+She would fight to keep Paul.
+
+And he came back to her.  And in his soul was a feeling of the
+satisfaction of self-sacrifice because he was faithful to her. 
+She loved him first; he loved her first.  And yet it was not enough. 
+His new young life, so strong and imperious, was urged towards
+something else.  It made him mad with restlessness.  She saw this,
+and wished bitterly that Miriam had been a woman who could take this
+new life of his, and leave her the roots.  He fought against his mother
+almost as he fought against Miriam.
+
+It was a week before he went again to Willey Farm. 
+Miriam had suffered a great deal, and was afraid to see him again. 
+Was she now to endure the ignominy of his abandoning her? 
+That would only be superficial and temporary.  He would come back. 
+She held the keys to his soul.  But meanwhile, how he would torture
+her with his battle against her.  She shrank from it.
+
+However, the Sunday after Easter he came to tea.  Mrs. Leivers
+was glad to see him.  She gathered something was fretting him,
+that he found things hard.  He seemed to drift to her for comfort. 
+And she was good to him.  She did him that great kindness of treating
+him almost with reverence.
+
+He met her with the young children in the front garden.
+
+"I'm glad you've come," said the mother, looking at him
+with her great appealing brown eyes.  "It is such a sunny day. 
+I was just going down the fields for the first time this year."
+
+He felt she would like him to come.  That soothed him.  They went,
+talking simply, he gentle and humble.  He could have wept with gratitude
+that she was deferential to him.  He was feeling humiliated. 
+
+At the bottom of the Mow Close they found a thrush's nest.
+
+"Shall I show you the eggs?" he said.
+
+"Do!" replied Mrs. Leivers.  "They seem SUCH a sign of spring,
+and so hopeful."
+
+He put aside the thorns, and took out the eggs, holding them
+in the palm of his hand.
+
+"They are quite hot--I think we frightened her off them,"
+he said.
+
+"Ay, poor thing!" said Mrs. Leivers.
+
+Miriam could not help touching the eggs, and his hand which,
+it seemed to her, cradled them so well.
+
+"Isn't it a strange warmth!" she murmured, to get near him.
+
+"Blood heat," he answered.
+
+She watched him putting them back, his body pressed against
+the hedge, his arm reaching slowly through the thorns, his hand
+folded carefully over the eggs.  He was concentrated on the act. 
+Seeing him so, she loved him; he seemed so simple and sufficient
+to himself.  And she could not get to him.
+
+After tea she stood hesitating at the bookshelf.  He took
+"Tartarin de Tarascon".  Again they sat on the bank of hay at the foot
+of the stack.  He read a couple of pages, but without any heart for it. 
+Again the dog came racing up to repeat the fun of the other day. 
+He shoved his muzzle in the man's chest.  Paul fingered his ear
+for a moment.  Then he pushed him away.
+
+"Go away, Bill," he said.  "I don't want you."
+
+Bill slunk off, and Miriam wondered and dreaded
+what was coming.  There was a silence about the
+youth that made her still with apprehension. 
+It was not his furies, but his quiet resolutions that she feared.
+
+Turning his face a little to one side, so that she could
+not see him, he began, speaking slowly and painfully:
+
+"Do you think--if I didn't come up so much--you might get
+to like somebody else--another man?"
+
+So this was what he was still harping on.
+
+"But I don't know any other men.  Why do you ask?" she replied,
+in a low tone that should have been a reproach to him.
+
+"Why," he blurted, "because they say I've no right to come up
+like this--without we mean to marry---"
+
+Miriam was indignant at anybody's forcing the issues between them. 
+She had been furious with her own father for suggesting to Paul,
+laughingly, that he knew why he came so much.
+
+"Who says?" she asked, wondering if her people had anything
+to do with it.  They had not.
+
+"Mother--and the others.  They say at this rate everybody will
+consider me engaged, and I ought to consider myself so, because it's
+not fair to you.  And I've tried to find out--and I don't think I
+love you as a man ought to love his wife.  What do you think about it?"
+
+Miriam bowed her head moodily.  She was angry at having
+this struggle.  People should leave him and her alone.
+
+"I don't know," she murmured.
+
+"Do you think we love each other enough to marry?"
+he asked definitely.  It made her tremble.
+
+"No," she answered truthfully.  "I don't think so--we're
+too young."
+
+"I thought perhaps," he went on miserably, "that you, with your
+intensity in things, might have given me more--than I could ever make
+up to you.  And even now--if you think it better--we'll be engaged."
+
+Now Miriam wanted to cry.  And she was angry, too.  He was
+always such a child for people to do as they liked with.
+
+"No, I don't think so," she said firmly.
+
+He pondered a minute.
+
+"You see," he said, "with me--I don't think one person would
+ever monopolize me--be everything to me--I think never."
+
+This she did not consider.
+
+"No," she murmured.  Then, after a pause, she looked at him,
+and her dark eyes flashed.
+
+"This is your mother," she said.  "I know she never liked me."
+
+"No, no, it isn't," he said hastily.  "It was for your sake
+she spoke this time.  She only said, if I was going on, I ought
+to consider myself engaged."  There was a silence.  "And if I ask
+you to come down any time, you won't stop away, will you?"
+
+She did not answer.  By this time she was very angry.
+
+"Well, what shall we do?" she said shortly.  "I suppose I'd
+better drop French.  I was just beginning to get on with it. 
+But I suppose I can go on alone."
+
+"I don't see that we need," he said.  "I can give you
+a French lesson, surely."
+
+"Well--and there are Sunday nights.  I shan't stop coming
+to chapel, because I enjoy it, and it's all the social life I get. 
+But you've no need to come home with me.  I can go alone."
+
+"All right," he answered, rather taken aback.  "But if I ask Edgar,
+he'll always come with us, and then they can say nothing."
+
+There was silence.  After all, then, she would not lose much. 
+For all their talk down at his home there would not be much difference. 
+She wished they would mind their own business.
+
+"And you won't think about it, and let it trouble you, will you?"
+he asked.
+
+"Oh no," replied Miriam, without looking at him.
+
+He was silent.  She thought him unstable.  He had no fixity
+of purpose, no anchor of righteousness that held him.
+
+"Because," he continued, "a man gets across his bicycle--and
+goes to work--and does all sorts of things.  But a woman broods."
+
+"No, I shan't bother," said Miriam.  And she meant it.
+
+It had gone rather chilly.  They went indoors.
+
+"How white Paul looks!"  Mrs. Leivers exclaimed.  "Miriam, you
+shouldn't have let him sit out of doors.  Do you think you've
+taken cold, Paul?"
+
+"Oh, no!" he laughed.
+
+But he felt done up.  It wore him out, the conflict in himself. 
+Miriam pitied him now.  But quite early, before nine o'clock, he rose
+to go.
+
+"You're not going home, are you?" asked Mrs. Leivers anxiously.
+
+"Yes," he replied.  "I said I'd be early."  He was very awkward.
+
+"But this IS early," said Mrs. Leivers.
+
+Miriam sat in the rocking-chair, and did not speak. 
+He hesitated, expecting her to rise and go with him to the barn
+as usual for his bicycle.  She remained as she was.  He was at a loss.
+
+"Well--good-night, all!" he faltered.
+
+She spoke her good-night along with all the others. 
+But as he went past the window he looked in.  She saw him pale,
+his brows knit slightly in a way that had become constant with him,
+his eyes dark with pain.
+
+She rose and went to the doorway to wave good-bye to him as he
+passed through the gate.  He rode slowly under the pine-trees,
+feeling a cur and a miserable wretch.  His bicycle went tilting down
+the hills at random.  He thought it would be a relief to break one's neck.
+
+Two days later he sent her up a book and a little note,
+urging her to read and be busy.
+
+At this time he gave all his friendship to Edgar. 
+He loved the family so much, he loved the farm so much; it was
+the dearest place on earth to him.  His home was not so lovable. 
+It was his mother.  But then he would have been just as happy with
+his mother anywhere.  Whereas Willey Farm he loved passionately. 
+He loved the little pokey kitchen, where men's boots tramped,
+and the dog slept with one eye open for fear of being trodden on;
+where the lamp hung over the table at night, and everything was so silent. 
+He loved Miriam's long, low parlour, with its atmosphere of romance,
+its flowers, its books, its high rosewood piano.  He loved the gardens
+and the buildings that stood with their scarlet roofs on the naked
+edges of the fields, crept towards the wood as if for cosiness,
+the wild country scooping down a valley and up the uncultured hills of
+the other side.  Only to be there was an exhilaration and a joy to him. 
+He loved Mrs. Leivers, with her unworldliness and her quaint cynicism;
+he loved Mr. Leivers, so warm and young and lovable; he loved Edgar,
+who lit up when he came, and the boys and the children and
+Bill--even the sow Circe and the Indian game-cock called Tippoo. 
+All this besides Miriam.  He could not give it up.
+
+So he went as often, but he was usually with Edgar.  Only all
+the family, including the father, joined in charades and games
+at evening.  And later, Miriam drew them together, and they read
+Macbeth out of penny books, taking parts.  It was great excitement. 
+Miriam was glad, and Mrs. Leivers was glad, and Mr. Leivers enjoyed it. 
+Then they all learned songs together from tonic sol-fa, singing
+in a circle round the fire.  But now Paul was very rarely alone
+with Miriam.  She waited.  When she and Edgar and he walked home
+together from chapel or from the literary society in Bestwood,
+she knew his talk, so passionate and so unorthodox nowadays,
+was for her.  She did envy Edgar, however, his cycling with Paul,
+his Friday nights, his days working in the fields.  For her Friday
+nights and her French lessons were gone.  She was nearly always alone,
+walking, pondering in the wood, reading, studying, dreaming, waiting. 
+And he wrote to her frequently.
+
+One Sunday evening they attained to their old rare harmony. 
+Edgar had stayed to Communion--he wondered what it was like--with
+Mrs. Morel.  So Paul came on alone with Miriam to his home.  He was
+more or less under her spell again.  As usual, they were discussing
+the sermon.  He was setting now full sail towards Agnosticism,
+but such a religious Agnosticism that Miriam did not suffer so badly. 
+They were at the Renan Vie de Jesus stage.  Miriam was the
+threshing-floor on which he threshed out all his beliefs.  While he
+trampled his ideas upon her soul, the truth came out for him.  She alone
+was his threshing-floor.  She alone helped him towards realization. 
+Almost impassive, she submitted to his argument and expounding.
+And somehow, because of her, he gradually realized where he was wrong.
+And what he realized, she realized.  She felt he could not do without her.
+
+They came to the silent house.  He took the key out of
+the scullery window, and they entered.  All the time he went
+on with his discussion.  He lit the gas, mended the fire,
+and brought her some cakes from the pantry.  She sat on the sofa,
+quietly, with a plate on her knee.  She wore a large white hat
+with some pinkish flowers.  It was a cheap hat, but he liked it. 
+Her face beneath was still and pensive, golden-brown and ruddy. 
+Always her ears were hid in her short curls.  She watched him.
+
+She liked him on Sundays.  Then he wore a dark suit that showed the
+lithe movement of his body.  There was a clean, clear-cut look about him. 
+He went on with his thinking to her.  Suddenly he reached for a Bible. 
+Miriam liked the way he reached up--so sharp, straight to the mark. 
+He turned the pages quickly, and read her a chapter of St. John. 
+As he sat in the armchair reading, intent, his voice only thinking,
+she felt as if he were using her unconsciously as a man uses his
+tools at some work he is bent on.  She loved it.  And the wistfulness
+of his voice was like a reaching to something, and it was as if she
+were what he reached with.  She sat back on the sofa away from him,
+and yet feeling herself the very instrument his hand grasped. 
+It gave her great pleasure.
+
+Then he began to falter and to get self-conscious.  And when he
+came to the verse, "A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow
+because her hour is come", he missed it out.  Miriam had felt him
+growing uncomfortable.  She shrank when the well-known words did
+not follow.  He went on reading, but she did not hear.  A grief
+and shame made her bend her head.  Six months ago he would have
+read it simply.  Now there was a scotch in his running with her. 
+Now she felt there was really something hostile between them,
+something of which they were ashamed.
+
+She ate her cake mechanically.  He tried to go on with his argument,
+but could not get back the right note.  Soon Edgar came in. 
+Mrs. Morel had gone to her friends'.  The three set off to Willey Farm.
+
+Miriam brooded over his split with her.  There was something else
+he wanted.  He could not be satisfied; he could give her no peace. 
+There was between them now always a ground for strife.
+She wanted to prove him.  She believed that his chief need in life
+was herself.  If she could prove it, both to herself and to him,
+the rest might go; she could simply trust to the future.
+
+So in May she asked him to come to Willey Farm and meet
+Mrs. Dawes.  There was something he hankered after.  She saw him,
+whenever they spoke of Clara Dawes, rouse and get slightly angry. 
+He said he did not like her.  Yet he was keen to know about her. 
+Well, he should put himself to the test.  She believed that there
+were in him desires for higher things, and desires for lower, and that
+the desire for the higher would conquer.  At any rate, he should try. 
+She forgot that her "higher" and "lower" were arbitrary.
+
+He was rather excited at the idea of meeting Clara at Willey Farm. 
+Mrs. Dawes came for the day.  Her heavy, dun-coloured hair was
+coiled on top of her head.  She wore a white blouse and navy skirt,
+and somehow, wherever she was, seemed to make things look paltry
+and insignificant.  When she was in the room, the kitchen seemed
+too small and mean altogether.  Miriam's beautiful twilighty
+parlour looked stiff and stupid.  All the Leivers were eclipsed
+like candles.  They found her rather hard to put up with. 
+Yet she was perfectly amiable, but indifferent, and rather hard.
+
+Paul did not come till afternoon.  He was early.  As he swung
+off his bicycle, Miriam saw him look round at the house eagerly. 
+He would be disappointed if the visitor had not come.  Miriam went
+out to meet him, bowing her head because of the sunshine. 
+Nasturtiums were coming out crimson under the cool green shadow
+of their leaves.  The girl stood, dark-haired, glad to see him.
+
+"Hasn't Clara come?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied Miriam in her musical tone.  "She's reading."
+
+He wheeled his bicycle into the barn.  He had put
+on a handsome tie, of which he was rather proud, and socks to match.
+
+"She came this morning?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," replied Miriam, as she walked at his side.  "You said you'd
+bring me that letter from the man at Liberty's.  Have you remembered?"
+
+"Oh, dash, no!" he said.  "But nag at me till you get it."
+
+"I don't like to nag at you."
+
+"Do it whether or not.  And is she any more agreeable?"
+he continued.
+
+"You know I always think she is quite agreeable."
+
+He was silent.  Evidently his eagerness to be early to-day
+had been the newcomer.  Miriam already began to suffer.  They went
+together towards the house.  He took the clips off his trousers,
+but was too lazy to brush the dust from his shoes, in spite of the
+socks and tie.
+
+Clara sat in the cool parlour reading.  He saw the nape of her
+white neck, and the fine hair lifted from it.  She rose, looking at
+him indifferently.  To shake hands she lifted her arm straight,
+in a manner that seemed at once to keep him at a distance,
+and yet to fling something to him.  He noticed how her breasts
+swelled inside her blouse, and how her shoulder curved handsomely
+under the thin muslin at the top of her arm.
+
+"You have chosen a fine day," he said.
+
+"It happens so," she said.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I am glad."
+
+She sat down, not thanking him for his politeness.
+
+"What have you been doing all morning?" asked Paul of Miriam.
+
+"Well, you see," said Miriam, coughing huskily, "Clara only
+came with father--and so--she's not been here very long."
+
+Clara sat leaning on the table, holding aloof.  He noticed
+her hands were large, but well kept.  And the skin on them seemed
+almost coarse, opaque, and white, with fine golden hairs.  She did
+not mind if he observed her hands.  She intended to scorn him. 
+Her heavy arm lay negligently on the table.  Her mouth was closed
+as if she were offended, and she kept her face slightly averted.
+
+"You were at Margaret Bonford's meeting the other evening,"
+he said to her.
+
+Miriam did not know this courteous Paul.  Clara glanced at him.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Why," asked Miriam, "how do you know?"
+
+"I went in for a few minutes before the train came," he answered.
+
+Clara turned away again rather disdainfully.
+
+"I think she's a lovable little woman," said Paul.
+
+"Margaret Bonford!" exclaimed Clara.  "She's a great deal
+cleverer than most men."
+
+"Well, I didn't say she wasn't," he said, deprecating. 
+"She's lovable for all that."
+
+"And, of course, that is all that matters," said Clara witheringly.
+
+He rubbed his head, rather perplexed, rather annoyed.
+
+"I suppose it matters more than her cleverness," he said;
+"which, after all, would never get her to heaven."
+
+"It's not heaven she wants to get--it's her fair share on earth,"
+retorted Clara.  She spoke as if he were responsible for some
+deprivation which Miss Bonford suffered.
+
+"Well," he said, "I thought she was warm, and awfully nice--only
+too frail.  I wished she was sitting comfortably in peace---"
+
+"'Darning her husband's stockings,'" said Clara scathingly.
+
+"I'm sure she wouldn't mind darning even my stockings," he said. 
+"And I'm sure she'd do them well.  Just as I wouldn't mind blacking
+her boots if she wanted me to."
+
+But Clara refused to answer this sally of his.  He talked
+to Miriam for a little while.  The other woman held aloof.
+
+"Well," he said, "I think I'll go and see Edgar.  Is he
+on the land?"
+
+"I believe," said Miriam, "he's gone for a load of coal. 
+He should be back directly."
+
+"Then," he said, "I'll go and meet him."
+
+Miriam dared not propose anything for the three of them. 
+He rose and left them.
+
+On the top road, where the gorse was out, he saw Edgar walking
+lazily beside the mare, who nodded her white-starred forehead
+as she dragged the clanking load of coal.  The young farmer's face
+lighted up as he saw his friend.  Edgar was good-looking, with dark,
+warm eyes.  His clothes were old and rather disreputable, and he
+walked with considerable pride.
+
+"Hello!" he said, seeing Paul bareheaded.  "Where are you going?"
+
+"Came to meet you.  Can't stand 'Nevermore.'"
+
+Edgar's teeth flashed in a laugh of amusement.
+
+"Who is 'Nevermore'?" he asked.
+
+"The lady--Mrs. Dawes--it ought to be Mrs. The Raven that quothed
+'Nevermore.'"
+
+Edgar laughed with glee.
+
+"Don't you like her?" he asked.
+
+"Not a fat lot," said Paul.  "Why, do you?"
+
+"No!" The answer came with a deep ring of conviction.  "No!"
+Edgar pursed up his lips.  "I can't say she's much in my line." 
+He mused a little.  Then:  "But why do you call her 'Nevermore'?"
+he asked.
+
+"Well," said Paul, "if she looks at a man she says haughtily
+'Nevermore,' and if she looks at herself in the looking-glass she
+says disdainfully 'Nevermore,' and if she thinks back she says it
+in disgust, and if she looks forward she says it cynically."
+
+Edgar considered this speech, failed to make much out of it,
+and said, laughing:
+
+"You think she's a man-hater?"
+
+"SHE thinks she is," replied Paul.
+
+"But you don't think so?"
+
+"No," replied Paul.
+
+"Wasn't she nice with you, then?"
+
+"Could you imagine her NICE with anybody?" asked the young man.
+
+Edgar laughed.  Together they unloaded the coal in the yard. 
+Paul was rather self-conscious, because he knew Clara could see if she
+looked out of the window.  She didn't look.
+
+On Saturday afternoons the horses were brushed down and groomed. 
+Paul and Edgar worked together, sneezing with the dust that came
+from the pelts of Jimmy and Flower.
+
+"Do you know a new song to teach me?" said Edgar.
+
+He continued to work all the time.  The back of his neck
+was sun-red when he bent down, and his fingers that held the brush
+were thick.  Paul watched him sometimes.
+
+"'Mary Morrison'?" suggested the younger.
+
+Edgar agreed.  He had a good tenor voice, and he loved to learn
+all the songs his friend could teach him, so that he could sing
+whilst he was carting.  Paul had a very indifferent baritone voice,
+but a good ear.  However, he sang softly, for fear of Clara. 
+Edgar repeated the line in a clear tenor.  At times they both broke
+off to sneeze, and first one, then the other, abused his horse.
+
+Miriam was impatient of men.  It took so little to amuse
+them--even Paul.  She thought it anomalous in him that he could
+be so thoroughly absorbed in a triviality.
+
+It was tea-time when they had finished.
+
+"What song was that?" asked Miriam.
+
+Edgar told her.  The conversation turned to singing.
+
+"We have such jolly times," Miriam said to Clara.
+
+Mrs. Dawes ate her meal in a slow, dignified way. 
+Whenever the men were present she grew distant.
+
+"Do you like singing?"  Miriam asked her.
+
+"If it is good," she said.
+
+Paul, of course, coloured.
+
+"You mean if it is high-class and trained?" he said.
+
+"I think a voice needs training before the singing is anything,"
+she said.
+
+"You might as well insist on having people's voices trained
+before you allowed them to talk," he replied.  "Really, people sing
+for their own pleasure, as a rule."
+
+"And it may be for other people's discomfort."
+
+"Then the other people should have flaps to their ears,"
+he replied.
+
+The boys laughed.  There was a silence.  He flushed deeply,
+and ate in silence.
+
+After tea, when all the men had gone but Paul, Mrs. Leivers
+said to Clara:
+
+"And you find life happier now?"
+
+"Infinitely."
+
+"And you are satisfied?"
+
+"So long as I can be free and independent."
+
+"And you don't MISS anything in your life?"
+asked Mrs. Leivers gently.
+
+"I've put all that behind me."
+
+Paul had been feeling uncomfortable during this discourse. 
+He got up.
+
+"You'll find you're always tumbling over the things you've put
+behind you," he said.  Then he took his departure to the cowsheds. 
+He felt he had been witty, and his manly pride was high.  He whistled
+as he went down the brick track.
+
+Miriam came for him a little later to know if he would go with
+Clara and her for a walk.  They set off down to Strelley Mill Farm. 
+As they were going beside the brook, on the Willey Water side,
+looking through the brake at the edge of the wood, where pink campions
+glowed under a few sunbeams, they saw, beyond the tree-trunks
+and the thin hazel bushes, a man leading a great bay horse through
+the gullies.  The big red beast seemed to dance romantically
+through that dimness of green hazel drift, away there
+where the air was shadowy, as if it were in the past,
+among the fading bluebells that might have bloomed
+for Deidre or Iseult.
+
+The three stood charmed.
+
+"What a treat to be a knight," he said, "and to have
+a pavilion here."
+
+"And to have us shut up safely?" replied Clara.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "singing with your maids at your broidery. 
+I would carry your banner of white and green and heliotrope.  I would
+have 'W.S.P.U.' emblazoned on my shield, beneath a woman rampant."
+
+"I have no doubt," said Clara, "that you would much rather
+fight for a woman than let her fight for herself."
+
+"I would.  When she fights for herself she seems like a dog
+before a looking-glass, gone into a mad fury with its own shadow."
+
+"And YOU are the looking-glass?" she asked, with a curl
+of the lip.
+
+"Or the shadow," he replied.
+
+"I am afraid," she said, "that you are too clever."
+
+"Well, I leave it to you to be GOOD," he retorted, laughing. 
+"Be good, sweet maid, and just let ME be clever."
+
+But Clara wearied of his flippancy.  Suddenly, looking at her,
+he saw that the upward lifting of her face was misery and not scorn. 
+His heart grew tender for everybody.  He turned and was gentle
+with Miriam, whom he had neglected till then.
+
+At the wood's edge they met Limb, a thin, swarthy man of forty,
+tenant of Strelley Mill, which he ran as a cattle-raising farm. 
+He held the halter of the powerful stallion indifferently, as if he
+were tired.  The three stood to let him pass over the stepping-stones
+of the first brook.  Paul admired that so large an animal should
+walk on such springy toes, with an endless excess of vigour. 
+Limb pulled up before them.
+
+"Tell your father, Miss Leivers," he said, in a peculiar
+piping voice, "that his young beas'es 'as broke that bottom fence
+three days an' runnin'."
+
+"Which?" asked Miriam, tremulous.
+
+The great horse breathed heavily, shifting round its red flanks,
+and looking suspiciously with its wonderful big eyes upwards from
+under its lowered head and falling mane.
+
+"Come along a bit," replied Limb, "an' I'll show you."
+
+The man and the stallion went forward.  It danced sideways,
+shaking its white fetlocks and looking frightened, as it felt itself
+in the brook.
+
+"No hanky-pankyin'," said the man affectionately to the beast.
+
+It went up the bank in little leaps, then splashed finely through
+the second brook.  Clara, walking with a kind of sulky abandon,
+watched it half-fascinated, half-contemptuous.  Limb stopped
+and pointed to the fence under some willows.
+
+"There, you see where they got through," he said.  "My man's
+druv 'em back three times."
+
+"Yes," answered Miriam, colouring as if she were at fault.
+
+"Are you comin' in?" asked the man.
+
+"No, thanks; but we should like to go by the pond."
+
+"Well, just as you've a mind," he said.
+
+The horse gave little whinneys of pleasure at being so near home.
+
+"He is glad to be back," said Clara, who was interested
+in the creature.
+
+"Yes--'e's been a tidy step to-day."
+
+They went through the gate, and saw approaching them from
+the big farmhouse a smallish, dark, excitable-looking woman
+of about thirty-five. Her hair was touched with grey, her dark
+eyes looked wild.  She walked with her hands behind her back. 
+Her brother went forward.  As it saw her, the big bay stallion
+whinneyed again.  She came up excitedly.
+
+"Are you home again, my boy!" she said tenderly to the horse,
+not to the man.  The great beast shifted round to her, ducking his head. 
+She smuggled into his mouth the wrinkled yellow apple she had
+been hiding behind her back, then she kissed him near the eyes. 
+He gave a big sigh of pleasure.  She held his head in her arms
+against her breast.
+
+"Isn't he splendid!" said Miriam to her.
+
+Miss Limb looked up.  Her dark eyes glanced straight at Paul.
+
+"Oh, good-evening, Miss Leivers," she said.  "It's ages
+since you've been down."
+
+Miriam introduced her friends.
+
+"Your horse IS a fine fellow!" said Clara.
+
+"Isn't he!"  Again she kissed him.  "As loving as any man!"
+
+"More loving than most men, I should think," replied Clara.
+
+"He's a nice boy!" cried the woman, again embracing the horse.
+
+Clara, fascinated by the big beast, went up to stroke his neck.
+
+"He's quite gentle," said Miss Limb.  "Don't you think big
+fellows are?"
+
+"He's a beauty!" replied Clara.
+
+She wanted to look in his eyes.  She wanted him to look at her.
+
+"It's a pity he can't talk," she said.
+
+"Oh, but he can--all but," replied the other woman.
+
+Then her brother moved on with the horse.
+
+"Are you coming in?  DO come in, Mr.--I didn't catch it."
+
+"Morel," said Miriam.  "No, we won't come in, but we should
+like to go by the mill-pond."
+
+"Yes--yes, do.  Do you fish, Mr. Morel?"
+
+"No," said Paul.
+
+"Because if you do you might come and fish any time,"
+said Miss Limb.  "We scarcely see a soul from week's end to week's end. 
+I should be thankful."
+
+"What fish are there in the pond?" he asked.
+
+They went through the front garden, over the sluice,
+and up the steep bank to the pond, which lay in shadow, with its
+two wooded islets.  Paul walked with Miss Limb.
+
+"I shouldn't mind swimming here," he said.
+
+"Do," she replied.  "Come when you like.  My brother will be
+awfully pleased to talk with you.  He is so quiet, because there
+is no one to talk to.  Do come and swim."
+
+Clara came up.
+
+"It's a fine depth," she said, "and so clear."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Limb.
+
+"Do you swim?" said Paul.  "Miss Limb was just saying we could
+come when we liked."
+
+"Of course there's the farm-hands," said Miss Limb.
+
+They talked a few moments, then went on up the wild hill,
+leaving the lonely, haggard-eyed woman on the bank.
+
+The hillside was all ripe with sunshine.  It was wild and tussocky,
+given over to rabbits.  The three walked in silence.  Then:
+
+"She makes me feel uncomfortable," said Paul.
+
+"You mean Miss Limb?" asked Miriam.  "Yes."
+
+"What's a matter with her?  Is she going dotty with being
+too lonely?"
+
+"Yes," said Miriam.  "It's not the right sort of life for her. 
+I think it's cruel to bury her there.  I really ought to go and see
+her more.  But--she upsets me."
+
+"She makes me feel sorry for her--yes, and she bothers me,"
+he said.
+
+"I suppose," blurted Clara suddenly, "she wants a man."
+
+The other two were silent for a few moments.
+
+"But it's the loneliness sends her cracked," said Paul.
+
+Clara did not answer, but strode on uphill.  She was walking
+with her hand hanging, her legs swinging as she kicked through
+the dead thistles and the tussocky grass, her arms hanging loose. 
+Rather than walking, her handsome body seemed to be blundering up
+the hill.  A hot wave went over Paul.  He was curious about her. 
+Perhaps life had been cruel to her.  He forgot Miriam, who was walking
+beside him talking to him.  She glanced at him, finding he did not
+answer her.  His eyes were fixed ahead on Clara.
+
+"Do you still think she is disagreeable?" she asked.
+
+He did not notice that the question was sudden.  It ran
+with his thoughts.
+
+"Something's the matter with her," he said.
+
+"Yes," answered Miriam.
+
+They found at the top of the hill a hidden wild field,
+two sides of which were backed by the wood, the other sides by high
+loose hedges of hawthorn and elder bushes.  Between these overgrown
+bushes were gaps that the cattle might have walked through had
+there been any cattle now.  There the turf was smooth as velveteen,
+padded and holed by the rabbits.  The field itself was coarse,
+and crowded with tall, big cowslips that had never been cut. 
+Clusters of strong flowers rose everywhere above the coarse
+tussocks of bent.  It was like a roadstead crowded with tan,
+fairy shipping.
+
+"Ah!" cried Miriam, and she looked at Paul, her dark eyes dilating. 
+He smiled.  Together they enjoyed the field of flowers.  Clara,
+a little way off, was looking at the cowslips disconsolately. 
+Paul and Miriam stayed close together, talking in subdued tones. 
+He kneeled on one knee, quickly gathering the best blossoms,
+moving from tuft to tuft restlessly, talking softly all the time. 
+Miriam plucked the flowers lovingly, lingering over them. 
+He always seemed to her too quick and almost scientific.
+Yet his bunches had a natural beauty more than hers.
+He loved them, but as if they were his and he had a right
+to them.  She had more reverence for them: 
+they held something she had not.
+
+The flowers were very fresh and sweet.  He wanted to drink them. 
+As he gathered them, he ate the little yellow trumpets. 
+Clara was still wandering about disconsolately.  Going towards her,
+he said:
+
+"Why don't you get some?"
+
+"I don't believe in it.  They look better growing."
+
+"But you'd like some?"
+
+"They want to be left."
+
+"I don't believe they do."
+
+"I don't want the corpses of flowers about me," she said.
+
+"That's a stiff, artificial notion," he said.  "They don't die
+any quicker in water than on their roots.  And besides, they LOOK
+nice in a bowl--they look jolly.  And you only call a thing a corpse
+because it looks corpse-like."
+
+"Whether it is one or not?" she argued.
+
+"It isn't one to me.  A dead flower isn't a corpse of a flower."
+
+Clara now ignored him.
+
+"And even so--what right have you to pull them?" she asked.
+
+"Because I like them, and want them--and there's plenty of them."
+
+"And that is sufficient?"
+
+"Yes.  Why not?  I'm sure they'd smell nice in your room
+in Nottingham."
+
+"And I should have the pleasure of watching them die."
+
+"But then--it does not matter if they do die."
+
+Whereupon he left her, and went stooping over the clumps
+of tangled flowers which thickly sprinkled the field like pale,
+luminous foam-clots.  Miriam had come close.  Clara was kneeling,
+breathing some scent from the cowslips.
+
+"I think," said Miriam, "if you treat them with reverence you
+don't do them any harm.  It is the spirit you pluck them in that matters."
+
+"Yes," he said.  "But no, you get 'em because you want 'em,
+and that's all."  He held out his bunch.
+
+Miriam was silent.  He picked some more.
+
+"Look at these!" he continued; "sturdy and lusty like little
+trees and like boys with fat legs."
+
+Clara's hat lay on the grass not far off.  She was kneeling,
+bending forward still to smell the flowers.  Her neck gave him
+a sharp pang, such a beautiful thing, yet not proud of itself
+just now.  Her breasts swung slightly in her blouse.  The arching
+curve of her back was beautiful and strong; she wore no stays. 
+Suddenly, without knowing, he was scattering a handful of cowslips
+over her hair and neck, saying:
+
+      "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
+      If the Lord won't have you the devil must."
+
+The chill flowers fell on her neck.  She looked up at him,
+with almost pitiful, scared grey eyes, wondering what he was doing. 
+Flowers fell on her face, and she shut her eyes.
+
+Suddenly, standing there above her, he felt awkward.
+
+"I thought you wanted a funeral," he said, ill at ease.
+
+Clara laughed strangely, and rose, picking the cowslips from
+her hair.  She took up her hat and pinned it on.  One flower had
+remained tangled in her hair.  He saw, but would not tell her. 
+He gathered up the flowers he had sprinkled over her.
+
+At the edge of the wood the bluebells had flowed over into the
+field and stood there like flood-water.  But they were fading now. 
+Clara strayed up to them.  He wandered after her.  The bluebells
+pleased him.
+
+"Look how they've come out of the wood!" he said.
+
+Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of gratitude.
+
+"Yes," she smiled.
+
+His blood beat up.
+
+"It makes me think of the wild men of the woods, how terrified
+they would be when they got breast to breast with the open space."
+
+"Do you think they were?" she asked.
+
+"I wonder which was more frightened among old tribes--those
+bursting out of their darkness of woods upon all the space of light,
+or those from the open tiptoeing into the forests."
+
+"I should think the second," she answered.
+
+"Yes, you DO feel like one of the open space sort, trying to
+force yourself into the dark, don't you?"
+
+"How should I know?" she answered queerly.
+
+The conversation ended there.
+
+The evening was deepening over the earth.  Already the valley was
+full of shadow.  One tiny square of light stood opposite at Crossleigh
+Bank Farm.  Brightness was swimming on the tops of the hills. 
+Miriam came up slowly, her face in her big, loose bunch of flowers,
+walking ankle-deep through the scattered froth of the cowslips. 
+Beyond her the trees were coming into shape, all shadow.
+
+"Shall we go?" she asked.
+
+And the three turned away.  They were all silent. 
+Going down the path they could see the light of home right across,
+and on the ridge of the hill a thin dark outline with little lights,
+where the colliery village touched the sky.
+
+"It has been nice, hasn't it?" he asked.
+
+Miriam murmured assent.  Clara was silent.
+
+"Don't you think so?" he persisted.
+
+But she walked with her head up, and still did not answer. 
+He could tell by the way she moved, as if she didn't care,
+that she suffered.
+
+At this time Paul took his mother to Lincoln.  She was bright
+and enthusiastic as ever, but as he sat opposite her in the
+railway carriage, she seemed to look frail.  He had a momentary
+sensation as if she were slipping away from him.  Then he
+wanted to get hold of her, to fasten her, almost to chain her. 
+He felt he must keep hold of her with his hand.
+
+They drew near to the city.  Both were at the window looking
+for the cathedral.
+
+"There she is, mother!" he cried.
+
+They saw the great cathedral lying couchant above the plain.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed.  "So she is!"
+
+He looked at his mother.  Her blue eyes were watching the
+cathedral quietly.  She seemed again to be beyond him.  Something in
+the eternal repose of the uplifted cathedral, blue and noble
+against the sky, was reflected in her, something of the fatality. 
+What was, WAS.  With all his young will he could not alter it. 
+He saw her face, the skin still fresh and pink and downy,
+but crow's-feet near her eyes, her eyelids steady, sinking a little,
+her mouth always closed with disillusion; and there was on her the same
+eternal look, as if she knew fate at last.  He beat against it
+with all the strength of his soul.
+
+"Look, mother, how big she is above the town!  Think, there are streets
+and streets below her!  She looks bigger than the city altogether."
+
+"So she does!" exclaimed his mother, breaking bright
+into life again.  But he had seen her sitting, looking steady
+out of the window at the cathedral, her face and eyes fixed,
+reflecting the relentlessness of life.  And the crow's-feet near
+her eyes, and her mouth shut so hard, made him feel he would go mad.
+
+They ate a meal that she considered wildly extravagant.
+
+"Don't imagine I like it," she said, as she ate her cutlet. 
+"I DON'T like it, I really don't!  Just THINK of your money wasted!"
+
+"You never mind my money," he said.  "You forget I'm a fellow
+taking his girl for an outing."
+
+And he bought her some blue violets.
+
+"Stop it at once, sir!" she commanded.  "How can I do it?"
+
+"You've got nothing to do.  Stand still!"
+
+And in the middle of High Street he stuck the flowers in her coat.
+
+"An old thing like me!" she said, sniffing.
+
+"You see," he said, "I want people to think we're awful swells. 
+So look ikey."
+
+"I'll jowl your head," she laughed.
+
+"Strut!" he commanded.  "Be a fantail pigeon."
+
+It took him an hour to get her through the street.  She stood
+above Glory Hole, she stood before Stone Bow, she stood everywhere,
+and exclaimed.
+
+A man came up, took off his hat, and bowed to her.
+
+"Can I show you the town, madam?"
+
+"No, thank you," she answered.  "I've got my son."
+
+Then Paul was cross with her for not answering with more dignity.
+
+"You go away with you!" she exclaimed.  "Ha! that's
+the Jew's House.  Now, do you remember that lecture, Paul--?"
+
+But she could scarcely climb the cathedral hill. 
+He did not notice.  Then suddenly he found her unable to speak. 
+He took her into a little public-house, where she rested.
+
+"It's nothing," she said.  "My heart is only a bit old;
+one must expect it."
+
+He did not answer, but looked at her.  Again his heart was
+crushed in a hot grip.  He wanted to cry, he wanted to smash things
+in fury.
+
+They set off again, pace by pace, so slowly.  And every
+step seemed like a weight on his chest.  He felt as if his heart
+would burst.  At last they came to the top.  She stood enchanted,
+looking at the castle gate, looking at the cathedral front. 
+She had quite forgotten herself.
+
+"Now THIS is better than I thought it could be!" she cried.
+
+But he hated it.  Everywhere he followed her, brooding. 
+They sat together in the cathedral.  They attended a little service
+in the choir.  She was timid.
+
+"I suppose it is open to anybody?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes," he replied.  "Do you think they'd have the damned cheek
+to send us away."
+
+"Well, I'm sure," she exclaimed, "they would if they heard
+your language."
+
+Her face seemed to shine again with joy and peace during
+the service.  And all the time he was wanting to rage and smash
+things and cry.
+
+Afterwards, when they were leaning over the wall, looking at
+the town below, he blurted suddenly:
+
+"Why can't a man have a YOUNG mother?  What is she old for?"
+
+"Well," his mother laughed, "she can scarcely help it."
+
+"And why wasn't I the oldest son?  Look--they say the young
+ones have the advantage--but look, THEY had the young mother.
+You should have had me for your eldest son."
+
+"I didn't arrange it," she remonstrated.  "Come to consider,
+you're as much to blame as me."
+
+He turned on her, white, his eyes furious.
+
+"What are you old for!" he said, mad with his impotence. 
+"WHY can't you walk?  WHY can't you come with me to places?"
+
+"At one time," she replied, "I could have run up that hill
+a good deal better than you."
+
+"What's the good of that to ME?" he cried, hitting his fist
+on the wall.  Then he became plaintive.  "It's too bad of you
+to be ill.  Little, it is--"
+
+"Ill!" she cried.  "I'm a bit old, and you'll have to put up
+with it, that's all."
+
+They were quiet.  But it was as much as they could bear.  They got
+jolly again over tea.  As they sat by Brayford, watching the boats,
+he told her about Clara.  His mother asked him innumerable questions.
+
+"Then who does she live with?"
+
+"With her mother, on Bluebell Hill."
+
+"And have they enough to keep them?"
+
+"I don't think so.  I think they do lace work."
+
+"And wherein lies her charm, my boy?"
+
+"I don't know that she's charming, mother.  But she's nice. 
+And she seems straight, you know--not a bit deep, not a bit."
+
+"But she's a good deal older than you."
+
+"She's thirty, I'm going on twenty-three."
+
+"You haven't told me what you like her for."
+
+"Because I don't know--a sort of defiant way she's got--a sort
+of angry way."
+
+Mrs. Morel considered.  She would have been glad now for her son
+to fall in love with some woman who would--she did not know what. 
+But he fretted so, got so furious suddenly, and again was melancholic. 
+She wished he knew some nice woman-- She did not know what she wished,
+but left it vague.  At any rate, she was not hostile to the idea
+of Clara.
+
+Annie, too, was getting married.  Leonard had gone away to work
+in Birmingham.  One week-end when he was home she had said to him:
+
+"You don't look very well, my lad."
+
+"I dunno," he said.  "I feel anyhow or nohow, ma."
+
+He called her "ma" already in his boyish fashion.
+
+"Are you sure they're good lodgings?" she asked.
+
+"Yes--yes.  Only--it's a winder when you have to pour your own
+tea out--an' nobody to grouse if you team it in your saucer and sup
+it up.  It somehow takes a' the taste out of it."
+
+Mrs. Morel laughed.
+
+"And so it knocks you up?" she said.
+
+"I dunno.  I want to get married," he blurted, twisting his
+fingers and looking down at his boots.  There was a silence.
+
+"But," she exclaimed, "I thought you said you'd wait another year."
+
+"Yes, I did say so," he replied stubbornly.
+
+Again she considered.
+
+"And you know," she said, "Annie's a bit of a spendthrift. 
+She's saved no more than eleven pounds.  And I know, lad, you haven't
+had much chance."
+
+He coloured up to the ears.
+
+"I've got thirty-three quid," he said.
+
+"It doesn't go far," she answered.
+
+He said nothing, but twisted his fingers.
+
+"And you know," she said, "I've nothing---"
+
+"I didn't want, ma!" he cried, very red, suffering and remonstrating.
+
+"No, my lad, I know.  I was only wishing I had.  And take away
+five pounds for the wedding and things--it leaves twenty-nine pounds. 
+You won't do much on that."
+
+He twisted still, impotent, stubborn, not looking up.
+
+"But do you really want to get married?" she asked.  "Do you
+feel as if you ought?"
+
+He gave her one straight look from his blue eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Then," she replied, "we must all do the best we can for it, lad."
+
+The next time he looked up there were tears in his eyes.
+
+"I don't want Annie to feel handicapped," he said, struggling.
+
+"My lad," she said, "you're steady--you've got a decent place. 
+If a man had NEEDED me I'd have married him on his last week's wages. 
+She may find it a bit hard to start humbly.  Young girls ARE like that. 
+They look forward to the fine home they think they'll have. 
+But I had expensive furniture.  It's not everything."
+
+So the wedding took place almost immediately.  Arthur came home,
+and was splendid in uniform.  Annie looked nice in a dove-grey
+dress that she could take for Sundays.  Morel called her a fool
+for getting married, and was cool with his son-in-law.  Mrs. Morel
+had white tips in her bonnet, and some white on her blouse,
+and was teased by both her sons for fancying herself so grand. 
+Leonard was jolly and cordial, and felt a fearful fool.  Paul could
+not quite see what Annie wanted to get married for.  He was fond of her,
+and she of him.  Still, he hoped rather lugubriously that it would
+turn out all right.  Arthur was astonishingly handsome in his scarlet
+and yellow, and he knew it well, but was secretly ashamed of the uniform. 
+Annie cried her eyes up in the kitchen, on leaving her mother. 
+Mrs. Morel cried a little, then patted her on the back and said:
+
+"But don't cry, child, he'll be good to you."
+
+Morel stamped and said she was a fool to go and tie herself up. 
+Leonard looked white and overwrought.  Mrs. Morel said to him:
+
+"I s'll trust her to you, my lad, and hold you responsible
+for her."
+
+"You can," he said, nearly dead with the ordeal.  And it
+was all over.
+
+When Morel and Arthur were in bed, Paul sat talking, as he
+often did, with his mother.
+
+"You're not sorry she's married, mother, are you?" he asked.
+
+"I'm not sorry she's married--but--it seems strange that she
+should go from me.  It even seems to me hard that she can prefer
+to go with her Leonard.  That's how mothers are--I know it's silly."
+
+"And shall you be miserable about her?"
+
+"When I think of my own wedding day," his mother answered,
+"I can only hope her life will be different."
+
+"But you can trust him to be good to her?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  They say he's not good enough for her.  But I say
+if a man is GENUINE, as he is, and a girl is fond of him--then--it
+should be all right.  He's as good as she."
+
+"So you don't mind?"
+
+"I would NEVER have let a daughter of mine marry a man I didn't
+FEEL to be genuine through and through.  And yet, there's a gap
+now she's gone."
+
+They were both miserable, and wanted her back again. 
+It seemed to Paul his mother looked lonely, in her new black silk
+blouse with its bit of white trimming.
+
+"At any rate, mother, I s'll never marry," he said.
+
+"Ay, they all say that, my lad.  You've not met the one yet. 
+Only wait a year or two."
+
+"But I shan't marry, mother.  I shall live with you, and we'll
+have a servant."
+
+"Ay, my lad, it's easy to talk.  We'll see when the time comes."
+
+"What time?  I'm nearly twenty-three."
+
+"Yes, you're not one that would marry young.  But in
+three years' time---"
+
+"I shall be with you just the same."
+
+"We'll see, my boy, we'll see."
+
+"But you don't want me to marry?"
+
+"I shouldn't like to think of you going through your life
+without anybody to care for you and do--no."
+
+"And you think I ought to marry?"
+
+"Sooner or later every man ought."
+
+"But you'd rather it were later."
+
+"It would be hard--and very hard.  It's as they say:
+
+      "'A son's my son till he takes him a wife,
+      But my daughter's my daughter the whole of her life.'"
+
+"And you think I'd let a wife take me from you?"
+
+"Well, you wouldn't ask her to marry your mother as well as you,"
+Mrs. Morel smiled.
+
+"She could do what she liked; she wouldn't have to interfere."
+
+"She wouldn't--till she'd got you--and then you'd see."
+
+"I never will see.  I'll never marry while I've got you--I won't."
+
+"But I shouldn't like to leave you with nobody, my boy,"
+she cried.
+
+"You're not going to leave me.  What are you?  Fifty-three!  I'll
+give you till seventy-five. There you are, I'm fat and forty-four.
+Then I'll marry a staid body.  See!"
+
+His mother sat and laughed.
+
+"Go to bed," she said--"go to bed."
+
+"And we'll have a pretty house, you and me, and a servant,
+and it'll be just all right.  I s'll perhaps be rich with my painting."
+
+"Will you go to bed!"
+
+"And then you s'll have a pony-carriage.  See yourself--a little
+Queen Victoria trotting round."
+
+"I tell you to go to bed," she laughed.
+
+He kissed her and went.  His plans for the future were always
+the same.
+
+Mrs. Morel sat brooding--about her daughter, about Paul,
+about Arthur.  She fretted at losing Annie.  The family was very
+closely bound.  And she felt she MUST live now, to be with her
+children.  Life was so rich for her.  Paul wanted her, and so did Arthur. 
+Arthur never knew how deeply he loved her.  He was a creature
+of the moment.  Never yet had he been forced to realise himself. 
+The army had disciplined his body, but not his soul.  He was in
+perfect health and very handsome.  His dark, vigorous hair sat close
+to his smallish head.  There was something childish about his nose,
+something almost girlish about his dark blue eyes.  But he had the fun
+red mouth of a man under his brown moustache, and his jaw was strong. 
+It was his father's mouth; it was the nose and eyes of her own mother's
+people--good-looking, weak-principled folk.  Mrs. Morel was anxious
+about him.  Once he had really run the rig he was safe.  But how far
+would he go?
+
+The army had not really done him any good.  He resented
+bitterly the authority of the officers.  He hated having to obey
+as if he were an animal.  But he had too much sense to kick. 
+So he turned his attention to getting the best out of it. 
+He could sing, he was a boon-companion.  Often he got into scrapes,
+but they were the manly scrapes that are easily condoned.  So he made
+a good time out of it, whilst his self-respect was in suppression. 
+He trusted to his good looks and handsome figure, his refinement,
+his decent education to get him most of what he wanted, and he
+was not disappointed.  Yet he was restless.  Something seemed
+to gnaw him inside.  He was never still, he was never alone. 
+With his mother he was rather humble.  Paul he admired and loved
+and despised slightly.  And Paul admired and loved and despised
+him slightly.
+
+Mrs. Morel had had a few pounds left to her by her father,
+and she decided to buy her son out of the army.  He was wild with joy. 
+Now he was like a lad taking a holiday.
+
+He had always been fond of Beatrice Wyld, and during his furlough
+he picked up with her again.  She was stronger and better in health. 
+The two often went long walks together, Arthur taking her arm
+in soldier's fashion, rather stiffly.  And she came to play the
+piano whilst he sang.  Then Arthur would unhook his tunic collar. 
+He grew flushed, his eyes were bright, he sang in a manly tenor. 
+Afterwards they sat together on the sofa.  He seemed to flaunt
+his body:  she was aware of him so--the strong chest, the sides,
+the thighs in their close-fitting trousers.
+
+He liked to lapse into the dialect when he talked to her. 
+She would sometimes smoke with him.  Occasionally she
+would only take a few whiffs at his cigarette.
+
+"Nay," he said to her one evening, when she reached
+for his cigarette.  "Nay, tha doesna.  I'll gi'e thee a smoke
+kiss if ter's a mind."
+
+"I wanted a whiff, no kiss at all," she answered.
+
+"Well, an' tha s'lt ha'e a whiff," he said, "along wi' t' kiss."
+
+"I want a draw at thy fag," she cried, snatching for the
+cigarette between his lips.
+
+He was sitting with his shoulder touching her.  She was small
+and quick as lightning.  He just escaped.
+
+"I'll gi'e thee a smoke kiss," he said.
+
+"Tha'rt a knivey nuisance, Arty Morel," she said, sitting back.
+
+"Ha'e a smoke kiss?"
+
+The soldier leaned forward to her, smiling.  His face was
+near hers.
+
+"Shonna!" she replied, turning away her head.
+
+He took a draw at his cigarette, and pursed up his mouth,
+and put his lips close to her.  His dark-brown cropped moustache
+stood out like a brush.  She looked at the puckered crimson lips,
+then suddenly snatched the cigarette from his fingers and darted away. 
+He, leaping after her, seized the comb from her back hair.  She turned,
+threw the cigarette at him.  He picked it up, put it in his mouth,
+and sat down.
+
+"Nuisance!" she cried.  "Give me my comb!"
+
+She was afraid that her hair, specially done for him,
+would come down.  She stood with her hands to her head.  He hid
+the comb between his knees.
+
+"I've non got it," he said.
+
+The cigarette trembled between his lips with laughter as he spoke.
+
+"Liar!" she said.
+
+"'S true as I'm here!" he laughed, showing his hands.
+
+"You brazen imp!" she exclaimed, rushing and scuffling for
+the comb, which he had under his knees.  As she wrestled with him,
+pulling at his smooth, tight-covered knees, he laughed till he
+lay back on the sofa shaking with laughter.  The cigarette fell
+from his mouth almost singeing his throat.  Under his delicate tan
+the blood flushed up, and he laughed till his blue eyes were blinded,
+his throat swollen almost to choking.  Then he sat up.  Beatrice was
+putting in her comb.
+
+"Tha tickled me, Beat," he said thickly.
+
+Like a flash her small white hand went out and smacked his face. 
+He started up, glaring at her.  They stared at each other. 
+Slowly the flush mounted her cheek, she dropped her eyes, then her head. 
+He sat down sulkily.  She went into the scullery to adjust her hair. 
+In private there she shed a few tears, she did not know what for.
+
+When she returned she was pursed up close.  But it was only a film
+over her fire.  He, with ruffled hair, was sulking upon the sofa. 
+She sat down opposite, in the armchair, and neither spoke. 
+The clock ticked in the silence like blows.
+
+"You are a little cat, Beat," he said at length, half apologetically.
+
+"Well, you shouldn't be brazen," she replied.
+
+There was again a long silence.  He whistled to himself
+like a man much agitated but defiant.  Suddenly she went across
+to him and kissed him.
+
+"Did it, pore fing!" she mocked.
+
+He lifted his face, smiling curiously.
+
+"Kiss?" he invited her.
+
+"Daren't I?" she asked.
+
+"Go on!" he challenged, his mouth lifted to her.
+
+Deliberately, and with a peculiar quivering smile that
+seemed to overspread her whole body, she put her mouth on his. 
+Immediately his arms folded round her.  As soon as the long kiss was
+finished she drew back her head from him, put her delicate fingers
+on his neck, through the open collar.  Then she closed her eyes,
+giving herself up again in a kiss.
+
+She acted of her own free will.  What she would do she did,
+and made nobody responsible.
+
+
+Paul felt life changing around him.  The conditions of youth
+were gone.  Now it was a home of grown-up people.  Annie was
+a married woman, Arthur was following his own pleasure in a way
+unknown to his folk.  For so long they had all lived at home,
+and gone out to pass their time.  But now, for Annie and Arthur,
+life lay outside their mother's house.  They came home for holiday
+and for rest.  So there was that strange, half-empty feeling about
+the house, as if the birds had flown.  Paul became more and more
+unsettled.  Annie and Arthur had gone.  He was restless to follow.
+Yet home was for him beside his mother.  And still there was
+something else, something outside, something he wanted.
+
+He grew more and more restless.  Miriam did not satisfy him. 
+His old mad desire to be with her grew weaker.  Sometimes he met
+Clara in Nottingham, sometimes he went to meetings with her,
+sometimes he saw her at Willey Farm.  But on these last occasions
+the situation became strained.  There was a triangle of antagonism
+between Paul and Clara and Miriam.  With Clara he took on a smart,
+worldly, mocking tone very antagonistic to Miriam.  It did not
+matter what went before.  She might be intimate and sad with him. 
+Then as soon as Clara appeared, it all vanished, and he played to
+the newcomer.
+
+Miriam had one beautiful evening with him in the hay. 
+He had been on the horse-rake, and having finished, came to help
+her to put the hay in cocks.  Then he talked to her of his hopes
+and despairs, and his whole soul seemed to lie bare before her. 
+She felt as if she watched the very quivering stuff of life in him. 
+The moon came out:  they walked home together:  he seemed to have
+come to her because he needed her so badly, and she listened to him,
+gave him all her love and her faith.  It seemed to her he brought
+her the best of himself to keep, and that she would guard it all
+her life.  Nay, the sky did not cherish the stars more surely and
+eternally than she would guard the good in the soul of Paul Morel. 
+She went on home alone, feeling exalted, glad in her faith.
+
+And then, the next day, Clara came.  They were to have tea
+in the hayfield.  Miriam watched the evening drawing to gold
+and shadow.  And all the time Paul was sporting with Clara. 
+He made higher and higher heaps of hay that they were jumping over. 
+Miriam did not care for the game, and stood aside.  Edgar and Geoffrey
+and Maurice and Clara and Paul jumped.  Paul won, because he
+was light.  Clara's blood was roused.  She could run like an Amazon. 
+Paul loved the determined way she rushed at the hay-cock and leaped,
+landed on the other side, her breasts shaken, her thick hair
+come undone.
+
+"You touched!" he cried.  "You touched!"
+
+"No!" she flashed, turning to Edgar.  "I didn't touch, did I? 
+Wasn't I clear?"
+
+"I couldn't say," laughed Edgar.
+
+None of them could say.
+
+"But you touched," said Paul.  "You're beaten."
+
+"I did NOT touch!" she cried.
+
+"As plain as anything," said Paul.
+
+"Box his ears for me!" she cried to Edgar.
+
+"Nay," Edgar laughed.  "I daren't. You must do it yourself."
+
+"And nothing can alter the fact that you touched," laughed Paul.
+
+She was furious with him.  Her little triumph before these
+lads and men was gone.  She had forgotten herself in the game. 
+Now he was to humble her.
+
+"I think you are despicable!" she said.
+
+And again he laughed, in a way that tortured Miriam.
+
+"And I KNEW you couldn't jump that heap," he teased.
+
+She turned her back on him.  Yet everybody could see that
+the only person she listened to, or was conscious of, was he,
+and he of her.  It pleased the men to see this battle between them. 
+But Miriam was tortured.
+
+Paul could choose the lesser in place of the higher, she saw. 
+He could be unfaithful to himself, unfaithful to the real,
+deep Paul Morel.  There was a danger of his becoming frivolous, of his
+running after his satisfaction like any Arthur, or like his father. 
+It made Miriam bitter to think that he should throw away his soul
+for this flippant traffic of triviality with Clara.  She walked
+in bitterness and silence, while the other two rallied each other,
+and Paul sported.
+
+And afterwards, he would not own it, but he was rather
+ashamed of himself, and prostrated himself before Miriam. 
+Then again he rebelled.
+
+"It's not religious to be religious," he said.  "I reckon
+a crow is religious when it sails across the sky.  But it only
+does it because it feels itself carried to where it's going,
+not because it thinks it is being eternal."
+
+But Miriam knew that one should be religious in everything,
+have God, whatever God might be, present in everything.
+
+"I don't believe God knows such a lot about Himself,"
+he cried.  "God doesn't KNOW things, He IS things.
+And I'm sure He's not soulful."
+
+And then it seemed to her that Paul was arguing God on to his
+own side, because he wanted his own way and his own pleasure. 
+There was a long battle between him and her.  He was utterly
+unfaithful to her even in her own presence; then he was ashamed,
+then repentant; then he hated her, and went off again.  Those were
+the ever-recurring conditions.
+
+She fretted him to the bottom of his soul.  There she
+remained--sad, pensive, a worshipper.  And he caused her sorrow. 
+Half the time he grieved for her, half the time he hated her. 
+She was his conscience; and he felt, somehow, he had got a conscience
+that was too much for him.  He could not leave her, because in one
+way she did hold the best of him.  He could not stay with her
+because she did not take the rest of him, which was three-quarters.
+So he chafed himself into rawness over her.
+
+When she was twenty-one he wrote her a letter which could
+only have been written to her.
+
+
+"May I speak of our old, worn love, this last time.  It, too,
+is changing, is it not?  Say, has not the body of that love died,
+and left you its invulnerable soul?  You see, I can give you
+a spirit love, I have given it you this long, long time; but not
+embodied passion.  See, you are a nun.  I have given you what I
+would give a holy nun--as a mystic monk to a mystic nun.  Surely you
+esteem it best.  Yet you regret--no, have regretted--the other. 
+In all our relations no body enters.  I do not talk to you through
+the senses--rather through the spirit.  That is why we cannot love
+in the common sense.  Ours is not an everyday affection.  As yet we
+are mortal, and to live side by side with one another would be dreadful,
+for somehow with you I cannot long be trivial, and, you know,
+to be always beyond this mortal state would be to lose it. 
+If people marry, they must live together as affectionate humans,
+who may be commonplace with each other without feeling awkward--not
+as two souls.  So I feel it.
+
+"Ought I to send this letter?--I doubt it.  But there--it
+is best to understand.  Au revoir."
+
+
+Miriam read this letter twice, after which she sealed it up. 
+A year later she broke the seal to show her mother the letter.
+
+"You are a nun--you are a nun."  The words went into her heart
+again and again.  Nothing he ever had said had gone into her
+so deeply, fixedly, like a mortal wound.
+
+She answered him two days after the party.
+
+"'Our intimacy would have been all-beautiful but for one
+little mistake,'" she quoted.  "Was the mistake mine?"
+
+Almost immediately he replied to her from Nottingham,
+sending her at the same time a little "Omar Khayyam."
+
+
+"I am glad you answered; you are so calm and natural you put
+me to shame.  What a ranter I am!  We are often out of sympathy. 
+But in fundamentals we may always be together I think.
+
+"I must thank you for your sympathy with my painting and drawing. 
+Many a sketch is dedicated to you.  I do look forward to your criticisms,
+which, to my shame and glory, are always grand appreciations. 
+It is a lovely joke, that.  Au revoir."
+
+
+This was the end of the first phase of Paul's love affair. 
+He was now about twenty-three years old, and, though still virgin,
+the sex instinct that Miriam had over-refined for so long now
+grew particularly strong.  Often, as he talked to Clara Dawes,
+came that thickening and quickening of his blood, that peculiar
+concentration in the breast, as if something were alive there,
+a new self or a new centre of consciousness, warning him that
+sooner or later he would have to ask one woman or another.  But he
+belonged to Miriam.  Of that she was so fixedly sure that he allowed
+her right.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CLARA
+
+WHEN he was twenty-three years old, Paul sent in a landscape to
+the winter exhibition at Nottingham Castle.  Miss Jordan had taken
+a good deal of interest in him, and invited him to her house,
+where he met other artists.  He was beginning to grow ambitious.
+
+One morning the postman came just as he was washing in
+the scullery.  Suddenly he heard a wild noise from his mother. 
+Rushing into the kitchen, he found her standing on the hearthrug
+wildly waving a letter and crying "Hurrah!" as if she had gone mad. 
+He was shocked and frightened.
+
+"Why, mother!" he exclaimed.
+
+She flew to him, flung her arms round him for a moment,
+then waved the letter, crying:
+
+"Hurrah, my boy!  I knew we should do it!"
+
+He was afraid of her--the small, severe woman with graying hair
+suddenly bursting out in such frenzy.  The postman came running back,
+afraid something had happened.  They saw his tipped cap over the
+short curtains.  Mrs. Morel rushed to the door.
+
+"His picture's got first prize, Fred," she cried, "and is sold
+for twenty guineas."
+
+"My word, that's something like!" said the young postman,
+whom they had known all his life.
+
+"And Major Moreton has bought it!" she cried.
+
+"It looks like meanin' something, that does, Mrs. Morel,"
+said the postman, his blue eyes bright.  He was glad to have brought
+such a lucky letter.  Mrs. Morel went indoors and sat down, trembling. 
+Paul was afraid lest she might have misread the letter, and might be
+disappointed after all.  He scrutinised it once, twice.  Yes, he became
+convinced it was true.  Then he sat down, his heart beating with joy.
+
+"Mother!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Didn't I SAY we should do it!" she said, pretending she
+was not crying.
+
+He took the kettle off the fire and mashed the tea.
+
+"You didn't think, mother--" he began tentatively.
+
+"No, my son--not so much--but I expected a good deal."
+
+"But not so much," he said.
+
+"No--no--but I knew we should do it."
+
+And then she recovered her composure, apparently at least. 
+He sat with his shirt turned back, showing his young throat almost
+like a girl's, and the towel in his hand, his hair sticking up wet.
+
+"Twenty guineas, mother!  That's just what you wanted to buy
+Arthur out.  Now you needn't borrow any.  It'll just do."
+
+"Indeed, I shan't take it all," she said.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Because I shan't."
+
+"Well--you have twelve pounds, I'll have nine."
+
+They cavilled about sharing the twenty guineas.  She wanted
+to take only the five pounds she needed.  He would not hear of it. 
+So they got over the stress of emotion by quarrelling.
+
+Morel came home at night from the pit, saying:
+
+"They tell me Paul's got first prize for his picture, and sold
+it to Lord Henry Bentley for fifty pound."
+
+"Oh, what stories people do tell!" she cried.
+
+"Ha!" he answered.  "I said I wor sure it wor a lie. 
+But they said tha'd told Fred Hodgkisson."
+
+"As if I would tell him such stuff!"
+
+"Ha!" assented the miner.
+
+But he was disappointed nevertheless.
+
+"It's true he has got the first prize," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+The miner sat heavily in his chair.
+
+"Has he, beguy!" he exclaimed.
+
+He stared across the room fixedly.
+
+"But as for fifty pounds--such nonsense!"  She was silent awhile. 
+"Major Moreton bought it for twenty guineas, that's true."
+
+"Twenty guineas!  Tha niver says!" exclaimed Morel.
+
+"Yes, and it was worth it."
+
+"Ay!" he said.  "I don't misdoubt it.  But twenty guineas
+for a bit of a paintin' as he knocked off in an hour or two!"
+
+He was silent with conceit of his son.  Mrs. Morel sniffed,
+as if it were nothing.
+
+"And when does he handle th' money?" asked the collier.
+
+"That I couldn't tell you.  When the picture is sent home,
+I suppose."
+
+There was silence.  Morel stared at the sugar-basin instead
+of eating his dinner.  His black arm, with the hand all gnarled
+with work lay on the table.  His wife pretended not to see him rub
+the back of his hand across his eyes, nor the smear in the coal-dust
+on his black face.
+
+"Yes, an' that other lad 'ud 'a done as much if they hadna
+ha' killed 'im," he said quietly.
+
+The thought of William went through Mrs. Morel like a cold blade. 
+It left her feeling she was tired, and wanted rest.
+
+Paul was invited to dinner at Mr. Jordan's.  Afterwards he said:
+
+"Mother, I want an evening suit."
+
+"Yes, I was afraid you would," she said.  She was glad. 
+There was a moment or two of silence.  "There's that one of William's,"
+she continued, "that I know cost four pounds ten
+and which he'd only worn three times."
+
+"Should you like me to wear it, mother?" he asked.
+
+"Yes.  I think it would fit you--at least the coat.  The trousers
+would want shortening."
+
+He went upstairs and put on the coat and vest.  Coming down,
+he looked strange in a flannel collar and a flannel shirt-front,
+with an evening coat and vest.  It was rather large.
+
+"The tailor can make it right," she said, smoothing her hand
+over his shoulder.  "It's beautiful stuff.  I never could find
+in my heart to let your father wear the trousers, and very glad
+I am now."
+
+And as she smoothed her hand over the silk collar she thought
+of her eldest son.  But this son was living enough inside the clothes. 
+She passed her hand down his back to feel him.  He was alive and hers. 
+The other was dead.
+
+He went out to dinner several times in his evening suit that had
+been William's.  Each time his mother's heart was firm with pride
+and joy.  He was started now.  The studs she and the children had
+bought for William were in his shirt-front; he wore one of William's
+dress shirts.  But he had an elegant figure.  His face was rough,
+but warm-looking and rather pleasing.  He did not look particularly
+a gentleman, but she thought he looked quite a man.
+
+He told her everything that took place, everything that was said. 
+It was as if she had been there.  And he was dying to introduce her
+to these new friends who had dinner at seven-thirty in the evening.
+
+"Go along with you!" she said.  "What do they want to know
+me for?"
+
+"They do!" he cried indignantly.  "If they want to know me--and
+they say they do--then they want to know you, because you are quite
+as clever as I am.  "
+
+"Go along with you, child! " she laughed.
+
+But she began to spare her hands.  They, too, were work-gnarled now. 
+The skin was shiny with so much hot water, the knuckles rather swollen. 
+But she began to be careful to keep them out of soda.  She regretted
+what they had been--so small and exquisite.  And when Annie insisted
+on her having more stylish blouses to suit her age, she submitted. 
+She even went so far as to allow a black velvet bow to be placed
+on her hair.  Then she sniffed in her sarcastic manner, and was
+sure she looked a sight.  But she looked a lady, Paul declared,
+as much as Mrs. Major Moreton, and far, far nicer.  The family
+was coming on.  Only Morel remained unchanged, or rather,
+lapsed slowly.
+
+Paul and his mother now had long discussions about life. 
+Religion was fading into the background.  He had shovelled away
+an the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the ground,
+and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel
+inside oneself for right and wrong, and should have the patience to
+gradually realise one's God.  Now life interested him more.
+
+"You know," he said to his mother, "I don't want to belong
+to the well-to-do middle class.  I like my common people best. 
+I belong to the common people."
+
+"But if anyone else said so, my son, wouldn't you be in a tear. 
+YOU know you consider yourself equal to any gentleman."
+
+"In myself," he answered, "not in my class or my education
+or my manners.  But in myself I am."
+
+"Very well, then.  Then why talk about the common people?"
+
+"Because--the difference between people isn't in their class,
+but in themselves.  Only from the middle classes one gets ideas,
+and from the common people--life itself, warmth.  You feel their hates
+and loves."
+
+"It's all very well, my boy.  But, then, why don't you go
+and talk to your father's pals?"
+
+"But they're rather different."
+
+"Not at all.  They're the common people.  After all, whom do you
+mix with now--among the common people?  Those that exchange ideas,
+like the middle classes.  The rest don't interest you."
+
+"But--there's the life---"
+
+"I don't believe there's a jot more life from Miriam than you
+could get from any educated girl--say Miss Moreton.  It is YOU
+who are snobbish about class."
+
+She frankly WANTED him to climb into the middle classes,
+a thing not very difficult, she knew.  And she wanted him in the end
+to marry a lady.
+
+Now she began to combat him in his restless fretting. 
+He still kept up his connection with Miriam, could neither break
+free nor go the whole length of engagement.  And this indecision
+seemed to bleed him of his energy.  Moreover, his mother suspected
+him of an unrecognised leaning towards Clara, and, since the latter
+was a married woman, she wished he would fall in love with one
+of the girls in a better station of life.  But he was stupid,
+and would refuse to love or even to admire a girl much, just because
+she was his social superior.
+
+"My boy," said his mother to him, "all your cleverness,
+your breaking away from old things, and taking life in your own hands,
+doesn't seem to bring you much happiness."
+
+"What is happiness!" he cried.  "It's nothing to me! 
+How AM I to be happy?"
+
+The plump question disturbed her.
+
+"That's for you to judge, my lad.  But if you could meet
+some GOOD woman who would MAKE you happy--and you began to think
+of settling your life--when you have the means--so that you could
+work without all this fretting--it would be much better for you."
+
+He frowned.  His mother caught him on the raw of his wound
+of Miriam.  He pushed the tumbled hair off his forehead, his eyes
+full of pain and fire.
+
+"You mean easy, mother," he cried.  "That's a woman's whole doctrine
+for life--ease of soul and physical comfort.  And I do despise it."
+
+"Oh, do you!" replied his mother.  "And do you call yours
+a divine discontent?"
+
+"Yes.  I don't care about its divinity.  But damn your happiness! 
+So long as life's full, it doesn't matter whether it's happy or not. 
+I'm afraid your happiness would bore me."
+
+"You never give it a chance," she said.  Then suddenly all
+her passion of grief over him broke out.  "But it does matter!"
+she cried.  "And you OUGHT to be happy, you ought to try to be happy,
+to live to be happy.  How could I bear to think your life wouldn't
+be a happy one!"
+
+"Your own's been bad enough, mater, but it hasn't left you
+so much worse off than the folk who've been happier.  I reckon
+you've done well.  And I am the same.  Aren't I well enough off?"
+
+"You're not, my son.  Battle--battle--and suffer.  It's about
+all you do, as far as I can see."
+
+"But why not, my dear?  I tell you it's the best---"
+
+"It isn't.  And one OUGHT to be happy, one OUGHT."
+
+By this time Mrs. Morel was trembling violently.  Struggles of
+this kind often took place between her and her son, when she
+seemed to fight for his very life against his own will to die. 
+He took her in his arms.  She was ill and pitiful.
+
+"Never mind, Little," he murmured.  "So long as you don't feel
+life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter,
+happiness or unhappiness."
+
+She pressed him to her.
+
+"But I want you to be happy," she said pathetically.
+
+"Eh, my dear--say rather you want me to live."
+
+Mrs. Morel felt as if her heart would break for him. 
+At this rate she knew he would not live.  He had that poignant
+carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life,
+which is a form of slow suicide.  It almost broke her heart. 
+With all the passion of her strong nature she hated Miriam for having
+in this subtle way undermined his joy.  It did not matter to her
+that Miriam could not help it.  Miriam did it, and she hated her.
+
+She wished so much he would fall in love with a girl equal
+to be his mate--educated and strong.  But he would not look at
+anybody above him in station.  He seemed to like Mrs. Dawes. 
+At any rate that feeling was wholesome.  His mother prayed and prayed
+for him, that he might not be wasted.  That was all her prayer--not
+for his soul or his righteousness, but that he might not be wasted. 
+And while he slept, for hours and hours she thought and prayed
+for him.
+
+He drifted away from Miriam imperceptibly, without knowing he
+was going.  Arthur only left the army to be married.  The baby was
+born six months after his wedding.  Mrs. Morel got him a job under
+the firm again, at twenty-one shillings a week.  She furnished for him,
+with the help of Beatrice's mother, a little cottage of two rooms. 
+He was caught now.  It did not matter how he kicked and struggled,
+he was fast.  For a time he chafed, was irritable with his
+young wife, who loved him; he went almost distracted when the baby,
+which was delicate, cried or gave trouble.  He grumbled for hours
+to his mother.  She only said:  "Well, my lad, you did it yourself,
+now you must make the best of it."  And then the grit came out in him. 
+He buckled to work, undertook his responsibilities, acknowledged that
+he belonged to his wife and child, and did make a good best of it. 
+He had never been very closely inbound into the family.  Now he was
+gone altogether.
+
+The months went slowly along.  Paul had more or less got into
+connection with the Socialist, Suffragette, Unitarian people in
+Nottingham, owing to his acquaintance with Clara.  One day
+a friend of his and of Clara's, in Bestwood, asked him to take
+a message to Mrs. Dawes.  He went in the evening across Sneinton
+Market to Bluebell Hill.  He found the house in a mean little street
+paved with granite cobbles and having causeways of dark blue,
+grooved bricks.  The front door went up a step from off this
+rough pavement, where the feet of the passersby rasped and clattered. 
+The brown paint on the door was so old that the naked wood showed
+between the rents.  He stood on the street below and knocked. 
+There came a heavy footstep; a large, stout woman of about sixty
+towered above him.  He looked up at her from the pavement. 
+She had a rather severe face.
+
+She admitted him into the parlour, which opened on to the street. 
+It was a small, stuffy, defunct room, of mahogany, and deathly
+enlargements of photographs of departed people done in carbon. 
+Mrs. Radford left him.  She was stately, almost martial. 
+In a moment Clara appeared.  She flushed deeply, and he was covered
+with confusion.  It seemed as if she did not like being discovered
+in her home circumstances.
+
+"I thought it couldn't be your voice," she said.
+
+But she might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. 
+She invited him out of the mausoleum of a parlour into the kitchen.
+
+That was a little, darkish room too, but it was smothered
+in white lace.  The mother had seated herself again by the cupboard,
+and was drawing thread from a vast web of lace.  A clump of fluff and
+ravelled cotton was at her right hand, a heap of three-quarter-inch lace
+lay on her left, whilst in front of her was the mountain of lace web,
+piling the hearthrug.  Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between
+the lengths of lace, strewed over the fender and the fireplace. 
+Paul dared not go forward, for fear of treading on piles of white stuff.
+
+On the table was a jenny for carding the lace.  There was
+a pack of brown cardboard squares, a pack of cards of lace,
+a little box of pins, and on the sofa lay a heap of drawn lace.
+
+The room was all lace, and it was so dark and warm that the white,
+snowy stuff seemed the more distinct.
+
+"If you're coming in you won't have to mind the work,"
+said Mrs. Radford.  "I know we're about blocked up.  But sit
+you down."
+
+Clara, much embarrassed, gave him a chair against the wall
+opposite the white heaps.  Then she herself took her place
+on the sofa, shamedly.
+
+"Will you drink a bottle of stout?"  Mrs. Radford asked. 
+"Clara, get him a bottle of stout."
+
+He protested, but Mrs. Radford insisted.
+
+"You look as if you could do with it," she said.  "Haven't you
+never any more colour than that?"
+
+"It's only a thick skin I've got that doesn't show
+the blood through," he answered.
+
+Clara, ashamed and chagrined, brought him a bottle of stout
+and a glass.  He poured out some of the black stuff.
+
+"Well," he said, lifting the glass, "here's health!"
+
+"And thank you," said Mrs. Radford.
+
+He took a drink of stout.
+
+"And light yourself a cigarette, so long as you don't set
+the house on fire," said Mrs. Radford.
+
+"Thank you," he replied.
+
+"Nay, you needn't thank me," she answered.  "I s'll be
+glad to smell a bit of smoke in th' 'ouse again.  A house o'
+women is as dead as a house wi' no fire, to my thinkin'.  I'm
+not a spider as likes a corner to myself.  I like a man about,
+if he's only something to snap at."
+
+Clara began to work.  Her jenny spun with a subdued buzz;
+the white lace hopped from between her fingers on to the card. 
+It was filled; she snipped off the length, and pinned the end
+down to the banded lace.  Then she put a new card in her jenny. 
+Paul watched her.  She sat square and magnificent.  Her throat and
+arms were bare.  The blood still mantled below her ears; she bent
+her head in shame of her humility.  Her face was set on her work. 
+Her arms were creamy and full of life beside the white lace;
+her large, well-kept hands worked with a balanced movement,
+as if nothing would hurry them.  He, not knowing, watched her all
+the time.  He saw the arch of her neck from the shoulder, as she
+bent her head; he saw the coil of dun hair; he watched her moving,
+gleaming arms.
+
+"I've heard a bit about you from Clara," continued the mother. 
+"You're in Jordan's, aren't you?"  She drew her lace unceasing.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ay, well, and I can remember when Thomas Jordan used to ask
+ME for one of my toffies."
+
+"Did he?" laughed Paul.  "And did he get it?"
+
+"Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't--which was latterly. 
+For he's the sort that takes all and gives naught, he is--or used
+to be."
+
+"I think he's very decent," said Paul.
+
+"Yes; well, I'm glad to hear it."
+
+Mrs. Radford looked across at him steadily.  There was something
+determined about her that he liked.  Her face was falling loose,
+but her eyes were calm, and there was something strong in her that
+made it seem she was not old; merely her wrinkles and loose cheeks
+were an anachronism.  She had the strength and sang-froid of a woman
+in the prime of life.  She continued drawing the lace with slow,
+dignified movements.  The big web came up inevitably over her apron;
+the length of lace fell away at her side.  Her arms were finely shapen,
+but glossy and yellow as old ivory.  They had not the peculiar dull
+gleam that made Clara's so fascinating to him.
+
+"And you've been going with Miriam Leivers?" the mother asked him.
+
+"Well--" he answered.
+
+"Yes, she's a nice girl," she continued.  "She's very nice,
+but she's a bit too much above this world to suit my fancy."
+
+"She is a bit like that," he agreed.
+
+"She'll never be satisfied till she's got wings and can fly
+over everybody's head, she won't," she said.
+
+Clara broke in, and he told her his message.  She spoke humbly
+to him.  He had surprised her in her drudgery.  To have her humble
+made him feel as if he were lifting his head in expectation.
+
+"Do you like jennying?" he asked.
+
+"What can a woman do!" she replied bitterly.
+
+"Is it sweated?"
+
+"More or less.  Isn't ALL woman's work?  That's another trick
+the men have played, since we force ourselves into the labour market."
+
+"Now then, you shut up about the men," said her mother.  "If the
+women wasn't fools, the men wouldn't be bad uns, that's what I say. 
+No man was ever that bad wi' me but what he got it back again. 
+Not but what they're a lousy lot, there's no denying it."
+
+"But they're all right really, aren't they?" he asked.
+
+"Well, they're a bit different from women," she answered.
+
+"Would you care to be back at Jordan's?" he asked Clara.
+
+"I don't think so," she replied.
+
+"Yes, she would!" cried her mother; "thank her stars if she
+could get back.  Don't you listen to her.  She's for ever on that
+'igh horse of hers, an' it's back's that thin an' starved it'll
+cut her in two one of these days."
+
+Clara suffered badly from her mother.  Paul felt as if his eyes
+were coming very wide open.  Wasn't he to take Clara's fulminations
+so seriously, after all?  She spun steadily at her work.  He experienced
+a thrill of joy, thinking she might need his help.  She seemed
+denied and deprived of so much.  And her arm moved mechanically,
+that should never have been subdued to a mechanism, and her head
+was bowed to the lace, that never should have been bowed.  She seemed
+to be stranded there among the refuse that life has thrown away,
+doing her jennying.  It was a bitter thing to her to be put aside
+by life, as if it had no use for her.  No wonder she protested.
+
+She came with him to the door.  He stood below in the mean street,
+looking up at her.  So fine she was in her stature and her bearing,
+she reminded him of Juno dethroned.  As she stood in the doorway,
+she winced from the street, from her surroundings.
+
+"And you will go with Mrs. Hodgkisson to Hucknall?"
+
+He was talking quite meaninglessly, only watching her. 
+Her grey eyes at last met his.  They looked dumb with humiliation,
+pleading with a kind of captive misery.  He was shaken and at a loss. 
+He had thought her high and mighty.
+
+When he left her, he wanted to run.  He went to the station
+in a sort of dream, and was at home without realising he had moved
+out of her street.
+
+He had an idea that Susan, the overseer of the Spiral girls,
+was about to be married.  He asked her the next day.
+
+"I say, Susan, I heard a whisper of your getting married. 
+What about it?"
+
+Susan flushed red.
+
+"Who's been talking to you?" she replied.
+
+"Nobody.  I merely heard a whisper that you WERE thinking---"
+
+"Well, I am, though you needn't tell anybody.  What's more,
+I wish I wasn't!"
+
+"Nay, Susan, you won't make me believe that."
+
+"Shan't I?  You CAN believe it, though.  I'd rather stop
+here a thousand times."
+
+Paul was perturbed.
+
+"Why, Susan?"
+
+The girl's colour was high, and her eyes flashed.
+
+"That's why!"
+
+"And must you?"
+
+For answer, she looked at him.  There was about him a candour
+and gentleness which made the women trust him.  He understood.
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry," he said.
+
+Tears came to her eyes.
+
+"But you'll see it'll turn out all right.  You'll make the best
+of it," he continued rather wistfully.
+
+"There's nothing else for it."
+
+"Yea, there's making the worst of it.  Try and make it all right."
+
+He soon made occasion to call again on Clara.
+
+"Would you," he said, "care to come back to Jordan's?"
+
+She put down her work, laid her beautiful arms on the table,
+and looked at him for some moments without answering.  Gradually the
+flush mounted her cheek.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+Paul felt rather awkward.
+
+"Well, because Susan is thinking of leaving," he said.
+
+Clara went on with her jennying.  The white lace leaped
+in little jumps and bounds on to the card.  He waited for her. 
+Without raising her head, she said at last, in a peculiar low voice:
+
+"Have you said anything about it?"
+
+"Except to you, not a word."
+
+There was again a long silence.
+
+"I will apply when the advertisement is out," she said.
+
+"You will apply before that.  I will let you know exactly when."
+
+She went on spinning her little machine, and did not contradict him.
+
+Clara came to Jordan's.  Some of the older hands, Fanny among them,
+remembered her earlier rule, and cordially disliked the memory. 
+Clara had always been "ikey", reserved, and superior.  She had never
+mixed with the girls as one of themselves.  If she had occasion
+to find fault, she did it coolly and with perfect politeness,
+which the defaulter felt to be a bigger insult than crassness. 
+Towards Fanny, the poor, overstrung hunchback, Clara was unfailingly
+compassionate and gentle, as a result of which Fanny shed
+more bitter tears than ever the rough tongues of the other overseers
+had caused her.
+
+There was something in Clara that Paul disliked, and much
+that piqued him.  If she were about, he always watched her strong
+throat or her neck, upon which the blonde hair grew low and fluffy. 
+There was a fine down, almost invisible, upon the skin of her face
+and arms, and when once he had perceived it, he saw it always.
+
+When he was at his work, painting in the afternoon,
+she would come and stand near to him, perfectly motionless. 
+Then he felt her, though she neither spoke nor touched him. 
+Although she stood a yard away he felt as if he were in contact
+with her.  Then he could paint no more.  He flung down the brushes,
+and turned to talk to her.
+
+Sometimes she praised his work; sometimes she was critical
+and cold.
+
+"You are affected in that piece," she would say; and, as there
+was an element of truth in her condemnation, his blood boiled
+with anger.
+
+Again:  "What of this?" he would ask enthusiastically.
+
+"H'm!" She made a small doubtful sound.  "It doesn't interest
+me much."
+
+"Because you don't understand it," he retorted.
+
+"Then why ask me about it?"
+
+"Because I thought you would understand."
+
+She would shrug her shoulders in scorn of his work. 
+She maddened him.  He was furious.  Then he abused her, and went into
+passionate exposition of his stuff.  This amused and stimulated her. 
+But she never owned that she had been wrong.
+
+During the ten years that she had belonged to the women's movement
+she had acquired a fair amount of education, and, having had some
+of Miriam's passion to be instructed, had taught herself French,
+and could read in that language with a struggle.  She considered
+herself as a woman apart, and particularly apart, from her class. 
+The girls in the Spiral department were all of good homes. 
+It was a small, special industry, and had a certain distinction. 
+There was an air of refinement in both rooms.  But Clara was aloof
+also from her fellow-workers.
+
+None of these things, however, did she reveal to Paul. 
+She was not the one to give herself away.  There was a sense of
+mystery about her.  She was so reserved, he felt she had much to reserve. 
+Her history was open on the surface, but its inner meaning was hidden
+from everybody.  It was exciting.  And then sometimes he caught
+her looking at him from under her brows with an almost furtive,
+sullen scrutiny, which made him move quickly.  Often she met his eyes. 
+But then her own were, as it were, covered over, revealing nothing. 
+She gave him a little, lenient smile.  She was to him extraordinarily
+provocative, because of the knowledge she seemed to possess,
+and gathered fruit of experience he could not attain.
+
+One day he picked up a copy of Lettres de mon Moulin from
+her work-bench.
+
+"You read French, do you?" he cried.
+
+Clara glanced round negligently.  She was making an elastic
+stocking of heliotrope silk, turning the Spiral machine with slow,
+balanced regularity, occasionally bending down to see her work or to
+adjust the needles; then her magnificent neck, with its down and fine
+pencils of hair, shone white against the lavender, lustrous silk. 
+She turned a few more rounds, and stopped.
+
+"What did you say?" she asked, smiling sweetly.
+
+Paul's eyes glittered at her insolent indifference to him.
+
+"I did not know you read French," he said, very polite.
+
+"Did you not?" she replied, with a faint, sarcastic smile.
+
+"Rotten swank!" he said, but scarcely loud enough to be heard.
+
+He shut his mouth angrily as he watched her.  She seemed
+to scorn the work she mechanically produced; yet the hose she
+made were as nearly perfect as possible.
+
+"You don't like Spiral work," he said.
+
+"Oh, well, all work is work," she answered, as if she knew
+all about it.
+
+He marvelled at her coldness.  He had to do everything hotly. 
+She must be something special.
+
+"What would you prefer to do?" he asked.
+
+She laughed at him indulgently, as she said:
+
+"There is so little likelihood of my ever being given a choice,
+that I haven't wasted time considering."
+
+"Pah!" he said, contemptuous on his side now.  "You only say
+that because you're too proud to own up what you want and can't get."
+
+"You know me very well," she replied coldly.
+
+"I know you think you're terrific great shakes, and that you
+live under the eternal insult of working in a factory."
+
+He was very angry and very rude.  She merely turned away from
+him in disdain.  He walked whistling down the room, flirted and
+laughed with Hilda.
+
+Later on he said to himself:
+
+"What was I so impudent to Clara for?"  He was rather annoyed
+with himself, at the same time glad.  "Serve her right; she stinks
+with silent pride," he said to himself angrily.
+
+In the afternoon he came down.  There was a certain weight
+on his heart which he wanted to remove.  He thought to do it
+by offering her chocolates.
+
+"Have one?" he said.  "I bought a handful to sweeten me up."
+
+To his great relief, she accepted.  He sat on the work-bench
+beside her machine, twisting a piece of silk round his finger. 
+She loved him for his quick, unexpected movements, like a young animal. 
+His feet swung as he pondered.  The sweets lay strewn on the bench. 
+She bent over her machine, grinding rhythmically, then stooping
+to see the stocking that hung beneath, pulled down by the weight. 
+He watched the handsome crouching of her back, and the apron-strings
+curling on the floor.
+
+"There is always about you," he said, "a sort of waiting. 
+Whatever I see you doing, you're not really there:  you are
+waiting--like Penelope when she did her weaving."  He could not help
+a spurt of wickedness.  "I'll call you Penelope," he said.
+
+"Would it make any difference?" she said, carefully removing
+one of her needles.
+
+"That doesn't matter, so long as it pleases me.  Here, I say,
+you seem to forget I'm your boss.  It just occurs to me."
+
+"And what does that mean?" she asked coolly.
+
+"It means I've got a right to boss you."
+
+"Is there anything you want to complain about?"
+
+"Oh, I say, you needn't be nasty," he said angrily.
+
+"I don't know what you want," she said, continuing her task.
+
+"I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully."
+
+"Call you 'sir', perhaps?" she asked quietly.
+
+"Yes, call me 'sir'.  I should love it."
+
+"Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir."
+
+His mouth closed, and a frown came on his face.  He jumped
+suddenly down.
+
+"You're too blessed superior for anything," he said.
+
+And he went away to the other girls.  He felt he was being
+angrier than he had any need to be.  In fact, he doubted slightly
+that he was showing off.  But if he were, then he would.  Clara heard
+him laughing, in a way she hated, with the girls down the next room.
+
+When at evening he went through the department after
+the girls had gone, he saw his chocolates lying untouched
+in front of Clara's machine.  He left them.  In the morning
+they were still there, and Clara was at work.  Later on Minnie,
+a little brunette they called Pussy, called to him:
+
+"Hey, haven't you got a chocolate for anybody?"
+
+"Sorry, Pussy," he replied.  "I meant to have offered them;
+then I went and forgot 'em."
+
+"I think you did," she answered.
+
+"I'll bring you some this afternoon.  You don't want them
+after they've been lying about, do you?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not particular," smiled Pussy.
+
+"Oh no," he said.  "They'll be dusty."
+
+He went up to Clara's bench.
+
+"Sorry I left these things littering about," he said.
+
+She flushed scarlet.  He gathered them together in his fist.
+
+"They'll be dirty now," he said.  "You should have taken them. 
+I wonder why you didn't.  I meant to have told you I wanted you to."
+
+He flung them out of the window into the yard below. 
+He just glanced at her.  She winced from his eyes.
+
+In the afternoon he brought another packet.
+
+"Will you take some?" he said, offering them first to Clara. 
+"These are fresh."
+
+She accepted one, and put it on to the bench.
+
+"Oh, take several--for luck," he said.
+
+She took a couple more, and put them on the bench also. 
+Then she turned in confusion to her work.  He went on up the room.
+
+"Here you are, Pussy," he said.  "Don't be greedy!"
+
+"Are they all for her?" cried the others, rushing up.
+
+"Of course they're not," he said.
+
+The girls clamoured round.  Pussy drew back from her mates.
+
+"Come out!" she cried.  "I can have first pick, can't I, Paul?"
+
+"Be nice with 'em," he said, and went away.
+
+"You ARE a dear," the girls cried.
+
+"Tenpence," he answered.
+
+He went past Clara without speaking.  She felt the three
+chocolate creams would burn her if she touched them.  It needed
+all her courage to slip them into the pocket of her apron.
+
+The girls loved him and were afraid of him.  He was so nice
+while he was nice, but if he were offended, so distant, treating them
+as if they scarcely existed, or not more than the bobbins of thread. 
+And then, if they were impudent, he said quietly:  "Do you mind
+going on with your work," and stood and watched.
+
+When he celebrated his twenty-third birthday, the house was
+in trouble.  Arthur was just going to be married.  His mother was
+not well.  His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents,
+was given a paltry, poor job.  Miriam was an eternal reproach. 
+He felt he owed himself to her, yet could not give himself.  The house,
+moreover, needed his support.  He was pulled in all directions. 
+He was not glad it was his birthday.  It made him bitter.
+
+He got to work at eight o'clock.  Most of the clerks had not
+turned up.  The girls were not due till 8.30.  As he was changing
+his coat, he heard a voice behind him say:
+
+"Paul, Paul, I want you."
+
+It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs,
+her face radiant with a secret.  Paul looked at her in astonishment.
+
+"I want you," she said.
+
+He stood, at a loss.
+
+"Come on," she coaxed.  "Come before you begin on the letters."
+
+He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow,
+"finishing-off" room.  Fanny walked before him:  her black bodice was
+short--the waist was under her armpits--and her green-black cashmere skirt
+seemed very long, as she strode with big strides before the young man,
+himself so graceful.  She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room,
+where the window opened on to chimney-pots.  Paul watched her thin
+hands and her flat red wrists as she excitedly twitched her white
+apron, which was spread on the bench in front of her.  She hesitated.
+
+"You didn't think we'd forgot you?" she asked, reproachful.
+
+"Why?" he asked.  He had forgotten his birthday himself.
+
+"'Why,' he says!  'Why!'  Why, look here!"  She pointed
+to the calendar, and he saw, surrounding the big black number
+"21", hundreds of little crosses in black-lead.
+
+"Oh, kisses for my birthday," he laughed.  "How did you know?"
+
+"Yes, you want to know, don't you?"  Fanny mocked, hugely delighted. 
+"There's one from everybody--except Lady Clara--and two from some. 
+But I shan't tell you how many I put."
+
+"Oh, I know, you're spooney," he said.
+
+"There you ARE mistaken!" she cried, indignant.  "I could
+never be so soft."  Her voice was strong and contralto.
+
+"You always pretend to be such a hard-hearted hussy," he laughed. 
+"And you know you're as sentimental---"
+
+"I'd rather be called sentimental than frozen meat,"
+Fanny blurted.  Paul knew she referred to Clara, and he smiled.
+
+"Do you say such nasty things about me?" he laughed.
+
+"No, my duck," the hunchback woman answered, lavishly tender. 
+She was thirty-nine.  "No, my duck, because you don't think yourself
+a fine figure in marble and us nothing but dirt.  I'm as good as you,
+aren't I, Paul?" and the question delighted her.
+
+"Why, we're not better than one another, are we?" he replied.
+
+"But I'm as good as you, aren't I, Paul?" she persisted daringly.
+
+"Of course you are.  If it comes to goodness, you're better."
+
+She was rather afraid of the situation.  She might get hysterical.
+
+"I thought I'd get here before the others--won't they say I'm deep! 
+Now shut your eyes---" she said.
+
+"And open your mouth, and see what God sends you," he continued,
+suiting action to words, and expecting a piece of chocolate. 
+He heard the rustle of the apron, and a faint clink of metal. 
+"I'm going to look," he said.
+
+He opened his eyes.  Fanny, her long cheeks flushed,
+her blue eyes shining, was gazing at him.  There was a little
+bundle of paint-tubes on the bench before him.  He turned pale.
+
+"No, Fanny," he said quickly.
+
+"From us all," she answered hastily.
+
+"No, but---"
+
+"Are they the right sort?" she asked, rocking herself with delight.
+
+"Jove! they're the best in the catalogue."
+
+"But they're the right sorts?" she cried.
+
+"They're off the little list I'd made to get when my ship
+came in."  He bit his lip.
+
+Fanny was overcome with emotion.  She must turn the conversation.
+
+"They was all on thorns to do it; they all paid their shares,
+all except the Queen of Sheba."
+
+The Queen of Sheba was Clara.
+
+"And wouldn't she join?"  Paul asked.
+
+"She didn't get the chance; we never told her; we wasn't going
+to have HER bossing THIS show.  We didn't WANT her to join."
+
+Paul laughed at the woman.  He was much moved.  At last he
+must go.  She was very close to him.  Suddenly she flung her arms
+round his neck and kissed him vehemently.
+
+"I can give you a kiss to-day," she said apologetically. 
+"You've looked so white, it's made my heart ache."
+
+Paul kissed her, and left her.  Her arms were so pitifully
+thin that his heart ached also.
+
+That day he met Clara as he ran downstairs to wash his hands
+at dinner-time.
+
+"You have stayed to dinner!" he exclaimed.  It was unusual
+for her.
+
+"Yes; and I seem to have dined on old surgical-appliance stock. 
+I MUST go out now, or I shall feel stale india-rubber right through."
+
+She lingered.  He instantly caught at her wish.
+
+"You are going anywhere?" he asked.
+
+They went together up to the Castle.  Outdoors she dressed
+very plainly, down to ugliness; indoors she always looked nice. 
+She walked with hesitating steps alongside Paul, bowing and turning
+away from him.  Dowdy in dress, and drooping, she showed to
+great disadvantage.  He could scarcely recognise her strong form,
+that seemed to slumber with power.  She appeared almost insignificant,
+drowning her stature in her stoop, as she shrank from the public gaze.
+
+The Castle grounds were very green and fresh.  Climbing the
+precipitous ascent, he laughed and chattered, but she was silent,
+seeming to brood over something.  There was scarcely time to go
+inside the squat, square building that crowns the bluff of rock. 
+They leaned upon the wall where the cliff runs sheer down to the Park. 
+Below them, in their holes in the sandstone, pigeons preened
+themselves and cooed softly.  Away down upon the boulevard at
+the foot of the rock, tiny trees stood in their own pools of shadow,
+and tiny people went scurrying about in almost ludicrous importance.
+
+"You feel as if you could scoop up the folk like tadpoles,
+and have a handful of them," he said.
+
+She laughed, answering:
+
+"Yes; it is not necessary to get far off in order to see
+us proportionately.  The trees are much more significant."
+
+"Bulk only," he said.
+
+She laughed cynically.
+
+Away beyond the boulevard the thin stripes of the metals
+showed upon the railway-track, whose margin was crowded with little
+stacks of timber, beside which smoking toy engines fussed. 
+Then the silver string of the canal lay at random among the
+black heaps.  Beyond, the dwellings, very dense on the river flat,
+looked like black, poisonous herbage, in thick rows and crowded beds,
+stretching right away, broken now and then by taller plants,
+right to where the river glistened in a hieroglyph across the country. 
+The steep scarp cliffs across the river looked puny.  Great stretches
+of country darkened with trees and faintly brightened with corn-land,
+spread towards the haze, where the hills rose blue beyond grey.
+
+"It is comforting," said Mrs. Dawes, "to think the town goes
+no farther.  It is only a LITTLE sore upon the country yet."
+
+"A little scab," Paul said.
+
+She shivered.  She loathed the town.  Looking drearily across
+at the country which was forbidden her, her impassive face, pale
+and hostile, she reminded Paul of one of the bitter, remorseful angels.
+
+"But the town's all right," he said; "it's only temporary. 
+This is the crude, clumsy make-shift we've practised on, till we find
+out what the idea is.  The town will come all right."
+
+The pigeons in the pockets of rock, among the perched bushes,
+cooed comfortably.  To the left the large church of St. Mary rose
+into space, to keep close company with the Castle, above the heaped
+rubble of the town.  Mrs. Dawes smiled brightly as she looked across
+the country.
+
+"I feel better," she said.
+
+"Thank you," he replied.  "Great compliment!"
+
+"Oh, my brother!" she laughed.
+
+"H'm! that's snatching back with the left hand what you gave
+with the right, and no mistake," he said.
+
+She laughed in amusement at him.
+
+"But what was the matter with you?" he asked.  "I know you
+were brooding something special.  I can see the stamp of it
+on your face yet."
+
+"I think I will not tell you," she said.
+
+"All right, hug it," he answered.
+
+She flushed and bit her lip.
+
+"No," she said, "it was the girls."
+
+"What about 'em?"  Paul asked.
+
+"They have been plotting something for a week now, and to-day
+they seem particularly full of it.  All alike; they insult me
+with their secrecy."
+
+"Do they?" he asked in concern.
+
+"I should not mind," she went on, in the metallic, angry tone,
+"if they did not thrust it into my face--the fact that they have
+a secret."
+
+"Just like women," said he.
+
+"It is hateful, their mean gloating," she said intensely.
+
+Paul was silent.  He knew what the girls gloated over. 
+He was sorry to be the cause of this new dissension.
+
+"They can have all the secrets in the world," she went on,
+brooding bitterly; "but they might refrain from glorying in them,
+and making me feel more out of it than ever.  It is--it is
+almost unbearable."
+
+Paul thought for a few minutes.  He was much perturbed.
+
+"I will tell you what it's all about," he said, pale and nervous. 
+"It's my birthday, and they've bought me a fine lot of paints,
+all the girls.  They're jealous of you"--he felt her stiffen coldly
+at the word 'jealous'--"merely because I sometimes bring you a book,"
+he added slowly.  "But, you see, it's only a trifle.  Don't bother
+about it, will you--because"--he laughed quickly--"well, what would they
+say if they saw us here now, in spite of their victory?"
+
+She was angry with him for his clumsy reference to
+their present intimacy.  It was almost insolent of him. 
+Yet he was so quiet, she forgave him, although it cost her an effort.
+
+Their two hands lay on the rough stone parapet of the Castle wall. 
+He had inherited from his mother a fineness of mould, so that
+his hands were small and vigorous.  Hers were large, to match her
+large limbs, but white and powerful looking.  As Paul looked at them
+he knew her.  "She is wanting somebody to take her hands--for all she
+is so contemptuous of us," he said to himself.  And she saw nothing but
+his two hands, so warm and alive, which seemed to live for her.  He was
+brooding now, staring out over the country from under sullen brows. 
+The little, interesting diversity of shapes had vanished from the scene;
+all that remained was a vast, dark matrix of sorrow and tragedy,
+the same in all the houses and the river-flats and the people and
+the birds; they were only shapen differently.  And now that the forms
+seemed to have melted away, there remained the mass from which all
+the landscape was composed, a dark mass of struggle and pain. 
+The factory, the girls, his mother, the large, uplifted church,
+the thicket of the town, merged into one atmosphere--dark, brooding,
+and sorrowful, every bit.
+
+"Is that two o'clock striking?" Mrs. Dawes said in surprise.
+
+Paul started, and everything sprang into form, regained
+its individuality, its forgetfulness, and its cheerfulness.
+
+They hurried back to work.
+
+When he was in the rush of preparing for the night's post,
+examining the work up from Fanny's room, which smelt of ironing,
+the evening postman came in.
+
+"'Mr. Paul Morel,'" he said, smiling, handing Paul a package. 
+"A lady's handwriting!  Don't let the girls see it."
+
+The postman, himself a favourite, was pleased to make fun
+of the girls' affection for Paul.
+
+It was a volume of verse with a brief note:  "You will allow me
+to send you this, and so spare me my isolation.  I also sympathise
+and wish you well.--C.D."  Paul flushed hot.
+
+"Good Lord!  Mrs. Dawes.  She can't afford it.  Good Lord,
+who ever'd have thought it!"
+
+He was suddenly intensely moved.  He was filled with the warmth
+of her.  In the glow he could almost feel her as if she were
+present--her arms, her shoulders, her bosom, see them, feel them,
+almost contain them.
+
+This move on the part of Clara brought them into closer intimacy. 
+The other girls noticed that when Paul met Mrs. Dawes his eyes lifted
+and gave that peculiar bright greeting which they could interpret. 
+Knowing he was unaware, Clara made no sign, save that
+occasionally she turned aside her face from him when he came upon her.
+
+They walked out together very often at dinner-time; it was
+quite open, quite frank.  Everybody seemed to feel that he was quite
+unaware of the state of his own feeling, and that nothing was wrong. 
+He talked to her now with some of the old fervour with which he
+had talked to Miriam, but he cared less about the talk; he did
+not bother about his conclusions.
+
+One day in October they went out to Lambley for tea. 
+Suddenly they came to a halt on top of the hill.  He climbed and sat
+on a gate, she sat on the stile.  The afternoon was perfectly still,
+with a dim haze, and yellow sheaves glowing through.  They were quiet.
+
+"How old were you when you married?" he asked quietly.
+
+"Twenty-two."
+
+Her voice was subdued, almost submissive.  She would tell
+him now.
+
+"It is eight years ago?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And when did you leave him?"
+
+"Three years ago."
+
+"Five years!  Did you love him when you married him?"
+
+She was silent for some time; then she said slowly:
+
+"I thought I did--more or less.  I didn't think much about it. 
+And he wanted me.  I was very prudish then."
+
+"And you sort of walked into it without thinking?"
+
+"Yes.  I seemed to have been asleep nearly all my life."
+
+"Somnambule?  But--when did you wake up?"
+
+"I don't know that I ever did, or ever have--since I was a child."
+
+"You went to sleep as you grew to be a woman?  How queer! 
+And he didn't wake you?"
+
+"No; he never got there," she replied, in a monotone.
+
+The brown birds dashed over the hedges where the rose-hips
+stood naked and scarlet.
+
+"Got where?" he asked.
+
+"At me.  He never really mattered to me."
+
+The afternoon was so gently warm and dim.  Red roofs
+of the cottages burned among the blue haze.  He loved the day. 
+He could feel, but he could not understand, what Clara was saying.
+
+"But why did you leave him?  Was he horrid to you?"
+
+She shuddered lightly.
+
+"He--he sort of degraded me.  He wanted to bully me because he
+hadn't got me.  And then I felt as if I wanted to run, as if I
+was fastened and bound up.  And he seemed dirty."
+
+"I see."
+
+He did not at all see.
+
+"And was he always dirty?" he asked.
+
+"A bit," she replied slowly.  "And then he seemed as if he
+couldn't get AT me, really.  And then he got brutal--he WAS brutal!"
+
+"And why did you leave him finally?"
+
+"Because--because he was unfaithful to me---"
+
+They were both silent for some time.  Her hand lay on the gate-post
+as she balanced.  He put his own over it.  His heart beat quickly.
+
+"But did you--were you ever--did you ever give him a chance?"
+
+"Chance?  How?"
+
+"To come near to you."
+
+"I married him--and I was willing---"
+
+They both strove to keep their voices steady.
+
+"I believe he loves you," he said.
+
+"It looks like it," she replied.
+
+He wanted to take his hand away, and could not.  She saved
+him by removing her own.  After a silence, he began again:
+
+"Did you leave him out of count all along?"
+
+"He left me," she said.
+
+"And I suppose he couldn't MAKE himself mean everything to you?"
+
+"He tried to bully me into it."
+
+But the conversation had got them both out of their depth. 
+Suddenly Paul jumped down.
+
+"Come on," he said.  "Let's go and get some tea."
+
+They found a cottage, where they sat in the cold parlour. 
+She poured out his tea.  She was very quiet.  He felt she had withdrawn
+again from him.  After tea, she stared broodingly into her tea-cup,
+twisting her wedding ring all the time.  In her abstraction she took
+the ring off her finger, stood it up, and spun it upon the table. 
+The gold became a diaphanous, glittering globe.  It fell, and the
+ring was quivering upon the table.  She spun it again and again. 
+Paul watched, fascinated.
+
+But she was a married woman, and he believed in simple friendship. 
+And he considered that he was perfectly honourable with regard to her. 
+It was only a friendship between man and woman, such as any civilised
+persons might have.
+
+He was like so many young men of his own age.  Sex had become
+so complicated in him that he would have denied that he ever
+could want Clara or Miriam or any woman whom he knew.  Sex desire
+was a sort of detached thing, that did not belong to a woman. 
+He loved Miriam with his soul.  He grew warm at the thought
+of Clara, he battled with her, he knew the curves of her breast
+and shoulders as if they had been moulded inside him; and yet he
+did not positively desire her.  He would have denied it for ever. 
+He believed himself really bound to Miriam.  If ever he should marry,
+some time in the far future, it would be his duty to marry Miriam. 
+That he gave Clara to understand, and she said nothing, but left him
+to his courses.  He came to her, Mrs. Dawes, whenever he could. 
+Then he wrote frequently to Miriam, and visited the girl occasionally. 
+So he went on through the winter; but he seemed not so fretted. 
+His mother was easier about him.  She thought he was getting away
+from Miriam.
+
+Miriam knew now how strong was the attraction of Clara for him;
+but still she was certain that the best in him would triumph. 
+His feeling for Mrs. Dawes--who, moreover, was a married woman--
+was shallow and temporal, compared with his love for herself. 
+He would come back to her, she was sure; with some of his young
+freshness gone, perhaps, but cured of his desire for the lesser things
+which other women than herself could give him.  She could bear all
+if he were inwardly true to her and must come back.
+
+He saw none of the anomaly of his position.  Miriam was his
+old friend, lover, and she belonged to Bestwood and home and his youth. 
+Clara was a newer friend, and she belonged to Nottingham, to life,
+to the world.  It seemed to him quite plain.
+
+Mrs. Dawes and he had many periods of coolness, when they saw
+little of each other; but they always came together again.
+
+"Were you horrid with Baxter Dawes?" he asked her.  It was
+a thing that seemed to trouble him.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  But weren't you horrid with him? 
+Didn't you do something that knocked him to pieces?"
+
+"What, pray?"
+
+"Making him feel as if he were nothing--I know," Paul declared.
+
+"You are so clever, my friend," she said coolly.
+
+The conversation broke off there.  But it made her cool
+with him for some time.
+
+She very rarely saw Miriam now.  The friendship between
+the two women was not broken off, but considerably weakened.
+
+"Will you come in to the concert on Sunday afternoon?" 
+Clara asked him just after Christmas.
+
+"I promised to go up to Willey Farm," he replied.
+
+"Oh, very well."
+
+"You don't mind, do you?" he asked.
+
+"Why should I?" she answered.
+
+Which almost annoyed him.
+
+"You know," he said, "Miriam and I have been a lot to each
+other ever since I was sixteen--that's seven years now."
+
+"It's a long time," Clara replied.
+
+"Yes; but somehow she--it doesn't go right---"
+
+"How?" asked Clara.
+
+"She seems to draw me and draw me, and she wouldn't leave
+a single hair of me free to fall out and blow away--she'd keep it."
+
+"But you like to be kept."
+
+"No," he said, "I don't.  I wish it could be normal, give and take--
+like me and you.  I want a woman to keep me, but not in her pocket."
+
+"But if you love her, it couldn't be normal, like me and you."
+
+"Yes; I should love her better then.  She sort of wants me
+so much that I can't give myself."
+
+"Wants you how?"
+
+"Wants the soul out of my body.  I can't help shrinking back
+from her."
+
+"And yet you love her!"
+
+"No, I don't love her.  I never even kiss her."
+
+"Why not?"  Clara asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I suppose you're afraid," she said.
+
+"I'm not.  Something in me shrinks from her like hell--she's
+so good, when I'm not good."
+
+"How do you know what she is?"
+
+"I do!  I know she wants a sort of soul union."
+
+"But how do you know what she wants?"
+
+"I've been with her for seven years."
+
+"And you haven't found out the very first thing about her."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"That she doesn't want any of your soul communion. 
+That's your own imagination.  She wants you."
+
+He pondered over this.  Perhaps he was wrong.
+
+"But she seems---" he began.
+
+"You've never tried," she answered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE TEST ON MIRIAM
+
+WITH the spring came again the old madness and battle.  Now he
+knew he would have to go to Miriam.  But what was his reluctance? 
+He told himself it was only a sort of overstrong virginity in her
+and him which neither could break through.  He might have married her;
+but his circumstances at home made it difficult, and, moreover, he did
+not want to marry.  Marriage was for life, and because they had become
+close companions, he and she, he did not see that it should inevitably
+follow they should be man and wife.  He did not feel that he wanted
+marriage with Miriam.  He wished he did.  He would have given his
+head to have felt a joyous desire to marry her and to have her. 
+Then why couldn't he bring it off?  There was some obstacle;
+and what was the obstacle?  It lay in the physical bondage. 
+He shrank from the physical contact.  But why?  With her he felt bound
+up inside himself.  He could not go out to her.  Something struggled
+in him, but he could not get to her.  Why?  She loved him. 
+Clara said she even wanted him; then why couldn't he go to her,
+make love to her, kiss her?  Why, when she put her arm in his,
+timidly, as they walked, did he feel he would burst forth in brutality
+and recoil?  He owed himself to her; he wanted to belong to her. 
+Perhaps the recoil and the shrinking from her was love in its first
+fierce modesty.  He had no aversion for her.  No, it was the opposite;
+it was a strong desire battling with a still stronger shyness
+and virginity.  It seemed as if virginity were a positive force,
+which fought and won in both of them.  And with her he felt it
+so hard to overcome; yet he was nearest to her, and with her alone
+could he deliberately break through.  And he owed himself to her.
+Then, if they could get things right, they could marry; but he 
+would not marry unless he could feel strong in the joy of it--never.  
+He could not have faced his mother.  It seemed to him that
+to sacrifice himself in a marriage he did not want would be
+degrading, and would undo all his life, make it a nullity.  
+He would try what he COULD do.
+
+And he had a great tenderness for Miriam.  Always, she was sad,
+dreaming her religion; and he was nearly a religion to her.  He could
+not bear to fail her.  It would all come right if they tried.
+
+He looked round.  A good many of the nicest men he knew were
+like himself, bound in by their own virginity, which they could not
+break out of.  They were so sensitive to their women that they would
+go without them for ever rather than do them a hurt, an injustice. 
+Being the sons of mothers whose husbands had blundered rather
+brutally through their feminine sanctities, they were themselves
+too diffident and shy.  They could easier deny themselves than incur
+any reproach from a woman; for a woman was like their mother, and they
+were full of the sense of their mother.  They preferred themselves
+to suffer the misery of celibacy, rather than risk the other person.
+
+He went back to her.  Something in her, when he looked at her,
+brought the tears almost to his eyes.  One day he stood behind her
+as she sang.  Annie was playing a song on the piano.  As Miriam sang
+her mouth seemed hopeless.  She sang like a nun singing to heaven. 
+It reminded him so much of the mouth and eyes of one who sings
+beside a Botticelli Madonna, so spiritual.  Again, hot as steel,
+came up the pain in him.  Why must he ask her for the other thing? 
+Why was there his blood battling with her?  If only he could have been
+always gentle, tender with her, breathing with her the atmosphere
+of reverie and religious dreams, he would give his right hand. 
+It was not fair to hurt her.  There seemed an eternal maidenhood
+about her; and when he thought of her mother, he saw the great
+brown eyes of a maiden who was nearly scared and shocked out of her
+virgin maidenhood, but not quite, in spite of her seven children. 
+They had been born almost leaving her out of count, not of her,
+but upon her.  So she could never let them go, because she never had
+possessed them.
+
+Mrs. Morel saw him going again frequently to Miriam,
+and was astonished.  He said nothing to his mother.  He did not explain
+nor excuse himself.  If he came home late, and she reproached him,
+he frowned and turned on her in an overbearing way:
+
+"I shall come home when I like," he said; "I am old enough."
+
+"Must she keep you till this time?"
+
+"It is I who stay," he answered.
+
+"And she lets you?  But very well," she said.
+
+And she went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for him;
+but she lay listening until he came, often long after. 
+It was a great bitterness to her that he had gone back to Miriam. 
+She recognised, however, the uselessness of any further interference. 
+He went to Willey Farm as a man now, not as a youth.  She had
+no right over him.  There was a coldness between him and her. 
+He hardly told her anything.  Discarded, she waited on him, cooked for
+him still, and loved to slave for him; but her face closed again
+like a mask.  There was nothing for her to do now but the housework;
+for all the rest he had gone to Miriam.  She could not forgive him. 
+Miriam killed the joy and the warmth in him.  He had been such a
+jolly lad, and full of the warmest affection; now he grew colder,
+more and more irritable and gloomy.  It reminded her of William;
+but Paul was worse.  He did things with more intensity, and more
+realisation of what he was about.  His mother knew how he was
+suffering for want of a woman, and she saw him going to Miriam. 
+If he had made up his mind, nothing on earth would alter him. 
+Mrs. Morel was tired.  She began to give up at last; she had finished. 
+She was in the way.
+
+He went on determinedly.  He realised more or less what his
+mother felt.  It only hardened his soul.  He made himself callous
+towards her; but it was like being callous to his own health. 
+It undermined him quickly; yet he persisted.
+
+He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one evening. 
+He had been talking to Miriam for some weeks, but had not come to
+the point.  Now he said suddenly:
+
+"I am twenty-four, almost."
+
+She had been brooding.  She looked up at him suddenly in surprise.
+
+"Yes.  What makes you say it?"
+
+There was something in the charged atmosphere that she dreaded.
+
+"Sir Thomas More says one can marry at twenty-four."
+
+She laughed quaintly, saying:
+
+"Does it need Sir Thomas More's sanction?"
+
+"No; but one ought to marry about then."
+
+"Ay," she answered broodingly; and she waited.
+
+"I can't marry you," he continued slowly, "not now, because we've
+no money, and they depend on me at home."
+
+She sat half-guessing what was coming.
+
+"But I want to marry now---"
+
+"You want to marry?" she repeated.
+
+"A woman--you know what I mean."
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Now, at last, I must," he said.
+
+"Ay," she answered.
+
+"And you love me?"
+
+She laughed bitterly.
+
+"Why are you ashamed of it," he answered.  "You wouldn't
+be ashamed before your God, why are you before people?"
+
+"Nay," she answered deeply, "I am not ashamed."
+
+"You are," he replied bitterly; "and it's my fault.  But you
+know I can't help being--as I am--don't you?"
+
+"I know you can't help it," she replied.
+
+"I love you an awful lot--then there is something short."
+
+"Where?" she answered, looking at him.
+
+"Oh, in me!  It is I who ought to be ashamed--like
+a spiritual cripple.  And I am ashamed.  It is misery.  Why is it?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Miriam.
+
+"And I don't know," he repeated.  "Don't you think we have
+been too fierce in our what they call purity?  Don't you think
+that to be so much afraid and averse is a sort of dirtiness?"
+
+She looked at him with startled dark eyes.
+
+"You recoiled away from anything of the sort, and I took
+the motion from you, and recoiled also, perhaps worse."
+
+There was silence in the room for some time.
+
+"Yes," she said, "it is so."
+
+"There is between us," he said, "all these years of intimacy. 
+I feel naked enough before you.  Do you understand?"
+
+"I think so," she answered.
+
+"And you love me?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Don't be bitter," he pleaded.
+
+She looked at him and was sorry for him; his eyes were dark
+with torture.  She was sorry for him; it was worse for him to have this
+deflated love than for herself, who could never be properly mated. 
+He was restless, for ever urging forward and trying to find a way out. 
+He might do as he liked, and have what he liked of her.
+
+"Nay," she said softly, "I am not bitter."
+
+She felt she could bear anything for him; she would suffer for him. 
+She put her hand on his knee as he leaned forward in his chair. 
+He took it and kissed it; but it hurt to do so.  He felt he was
+putting himself aside.  He sat there sacrificed to her purity,
+which felt more like nullity.  How could he kiss her hand passionately,
+when it would drive her away, and leave nothing but pain?  Yet slowly
+he drew her to him and kissed her.
+
+They knew each other too well to pretend anything. 
+As she kissed him, she watched his eyes; they were staring across
+the room, with a peculiar dark blaze in them that fascinated her. 
+He was perfectly still.  She could feel his heart throbbing heavily
+in his breast.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
+
+The blaze in his eyes shuddered, became uncertain.
+
+"I was thinking, all the while, I love you.  I have been obstinate."
+
+She sank her head on his breast.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"That's all," he said, and his voice seemed sure, and his mouth
+was kissing her throat.
+
+Then she raised her head and looked into his eyes with her
+full gaze of love.  The blaze struggled, seemed to try to get away
+from her, and then was quenched.  He turned his head quickly aside. 
+It was a moment of anguish.
+
+"Kiss me," she whispered.
+
+He shut his eyes, and kissed her, and his arms folded her
+closer and closer.
+
+When she walked home with him over the fields, he said:
+
+"I am glad I came back to you.  I feel so simple with you--as
+if there was nothing to hide.  We will be happy?"
+
+"Yes," she murmured, and the tears came to her eyes.
+
+"Some sort of perversity in our souls," he said, "makes us
+not want, get away from, the very thing we want.  We have to fight
+against that."
+
+"Yes," she said, and she felt stunned.
+
+As she stood under the drooping-thorn tree, in the darkness by
+the roadside, he kissed her, and his fingers wandered over her face. 
+In the darkness, where he could not see her but only feel her,
+his passion flooded him.  He clasped her very close.
+
+"Sometime you will have me?" he murmured, hiding his face
+on her shoulder.  It was so difficult.
+
+"Not now," she said.
+
+His hopes and his heart sunk.  A dreariness came over him.
+
+"No," he said.
+
+His clasp of her slackened.
+
+"I love to feel your arm THERE!" she said, pressing his arm
+against her back, where it went round her waist.  "It rests me so."
+
+He tightened the pressure of his arm upon the small of her
+back to rest her.
+
+"We belong to each other," he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why shouldn't we belong to each other altogether?"
+
+"But---" she faltered.
+
+"I know it's a lot to ask," he said; "but there's not much risk
+for you really--not in the Gretchen way.  You can trust me there?"
+
+"Oh, I can trust you."  The answer came quick and strong. 
+"It's not that--it's not that at all--but---"
+
+"What?"
+
+She hid her face in his neck with a little cry of misery.
+
+"I don't know!" she cried.
+
+She seemed slightly hysterical, but with a sort of horror. 
+His heart died in him.
+
+"You don't think it ugly?" he asked.
+
+"No, not now.  You have TAUGHT me it isn't."
+
+"You are afraid?"
+
+She calmed herself hastily.
+
+"Yes, I am only afraid," she said.
+
+He kissed her tenderly.
+
+"Never mind," he said.  "You should please yourself."
+
+Suddenly she gripped his arms round her, and clenched her
+body stiff.
+
+"You SHALL have me," she said, through her shut teeth.
+
+His heart beat up again like fire.  He folded her close, and his
+mouth was on her throat.  She could not bear it.  She drew away. 
+He disengaged her.
+
+"Won't you be late?" she asked gently.
+
+He sighed, scarcely hearing what she said.  She waited,
+wishing he would go.  At last he kissed her quickly and climbed
+the fence.  Looking round he saw the pale blotch of her face down
+in the darkness under the hanging tree.  There was no more of her
+but this pale blotch.
+
+"Good-bye!" she called softly.  She had no body, only a
+voice and a dim face.  He turned away and ran down the road,
+his fists clenched; and when he came to the wall over the lake
+he leaned there, almost stunned, looking up the black water.
+
+Miriam plunged home over the meadows.  She was not afraid
+of people, what they might say; but she dreaded the issue
+with him.  Yes, she would let him have her if he insisted;
+and then, when she thought of it afterwards, her heart went down. 
+He would be disappointed, he would find no satisfaction, and then he
+would go away.  Yet he was so insistent; and over this, which did
+not seem so all-important to her, was their love to break down. 
+After all, he was only like other men, seeking his satisfaction. 
+Oh, but there was something more in him, something deeper!  She could
+trust to it, in spite of all desires.  He said that possession was
+a great moment in life.  All strong emotions concentrated there. 
+Perhaps it was so.  There was something divine in it; then she
+would submit, religiously, to the sacrifice.  He should have her. 
+And at the thought her whole body clenched itself involuntarily,
+hard, as if against something; but Life forced her through this
+gate of suffering, too, and she would submit.  At any rate,
+it would give him what he wanted, which was her deepest wish. 
+She brooded and brooded and brooded herself towards accepting him.
+
+He courted her now like a lover.  Often, when he grew hot,
+she put his face from her, held it between her hands, and looked in
+his eyes.  He could not meet her gaze.  Her dark eyes, full of love,
+earnest and searching, made him turn away.  Not for an instant
+would she let him forget.  Back again he had to torture himself
+into a sense of his responsibility and hers.  Never any relaxing, 
+never any leaving himself to the great hunger and impersonality
+of passion; he must be brought back to a deliberate, reflective creature. 
+As if from a swoon of passion she caged him back to the littleness,
+the personal relationship.  He could not bear it.  "Leave me
+alone--leave me alone!" he wanted to cry; but she wanted him to
+look at her with eyes full of love.  His eyes, full of the dark,
+impersonal fire of desire, did not belong to her.
+
+There was a great crop of cherries at the farm.  The trees at
+the back of the house, very large and tall, hung thick with scarlet
+and crimson drops, under the dark leaves.  Paul and Edgar were gathering
+the fruit one evening.  It had been a hot day, and now the clouds
+were rolling in the sky, dark and warm.  Paul combed high in the tree,
+above the scarlet roofs of the buildings.  The wind, moaning steadily,
+made the whole tree rock with a subtle, thrilling motion that stirred
+the blood.  The young man, perched insecurely in the slender branches,
+rocked till he felt slightly drunk, reached down the boughs,
+where the scarlet beady cherries hung thick underneath, and tore
+off handful after handful of the sleek, cool-fleshed fruit. 
+Cherries touched his ears and his neck as he stretched forward,
+their chill finger-tips sending a flash down his blood.  All shades
+of red, from a golden vermilion to a rich crimson, glowed and met
+his eyes under a darkness of leaves.
+
+The sun, going down, suddenly caught the broken clouds. 
+Immense piles of gold flared out in the south-east, heaped in soft,
+glowing yellow right up the sky.  The world, till now dusk and grey,
+reflected the gold glow, astonished.  Everywhere the trees,
+and the grass, and the far-off water, seemed roused from the twilight
+and shining.
+
+Miriam came out wondering.
+
+"Oh!" Paul heard her mellow voice call, "isn't it wonderful?"
+
+He looked down.  There was a faint gold glimmer on her face,
+that looked very soft, turned up to him.
+
+"How high you are!" she said.
+
+Beside her, on the rhubarb leaves, were four dead birds,
+thieves that had been shot.  Paul saw some cherry stones hanging
+quite bleached, like skeletons, picked clear of flesh.  He looked
+down again to Miriam.
+
+"Clouds are on fire," he said.
+
+"Beautiful!" she cried.
+
+She seemed so small, so soft, so tender, down there.  He threw
+a handful of cherries at her.  She was startled and frightened. 
+He laughed with a low, chuckling sound, and pelted her.  She ran
+for shelter, picking up some cherries.  Two fine red pairs she hung
+over her ears; then she looked up again.
+
+"Haven't you got enough?" she asked.
+
+"Nearly.  It is like being on a ship up here."
+
+"And how long will you stay?"
+
+"While the sunset lasts."
+
+She went to the fence and sat there, watching the gold clouds fall
+to pieces, and go in immense, rose-coloured ruin towards the darkness. 
+Gold flamed to scarlet, like pain in its intense brightness. 
+Then the scarlet sank to rose, and rose to crimson, and quickly
+the passion went out of the sky.  All the world was dark grey. 
+Paul scrambled quickly down with his basket, tearing his shirt-sleeve
+as he did so.
+
+"They are lovely," said Miriam, fingering the cherries.
+
+"I've torn my sleeve," he answered.
+
+She took the three-cornered rip, saying:
+
+"I shall have to mend it."  It was near the shoulder. 
+She put her fingers through the tear.  "How warm!" she said.
+
+He laughed.  There was a new, strange note in his voice,
+one that made her pant.
+
+"Shall we stay out?" he said.
+
+"Won't it rain?" she asked.
+
+"No, let us walk a little way."
+
+They went down the fields and into the thick plantation
+of trees and pines.
+
+"Shall we go in among the trees?" he asked.
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was very dark among the firs, and the sharp spines pricked
+her face.  She was afraid.  Paul was silent and strange.
+
+"I like the darkness," he said.  "I wish it were thicker--good,
+thick darkness."
+
+He seemed to be almost unaware of her as a person:  she was
+only to him then a woman.  She was afraid.
+
+He stood against a pine-tree trunk and took her in his arms. 
+She relinquished herself to him, but it was a sacrifice in which she
+felt something of horror.  This thick-voiced, oblivious man was
+a stranger to her.
+
+Later it began to rain.  The pine-trees smelled very strong. 
+Paul lay with his head on the ground, on the dead pine needles,
+listening to the sharp hiss of the rain--a steady, keen noise. 
+His heart was down, very heavy.  Now he realised that she had
+not been with him all the time, that her soul had stood apart,
+in a sort of horror.  He was physically at rest, but no more. 
+Very dreary at heart, very sad, and very tender, his fingers wandered
+over her face pitifully.  Now again she loved him deeply.  He was tender
+and beautiful.
+
+"The rain!" he said.
+
+"Yes--is it coming on you?"
+
+She put her hands over him, on his hair, on his shoulders, to feel
+if the raindrops fell on him.  She loved him dearly.  He, as he lay
+with his face on the dead pine-leaves, felt extraordinarily quiet. 
+He did not mind if the raindrops came on him:  he would have lain
+and got wet through:  he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his
+living were smeared away into the beyond, near and quite lovable. 
+This strange, gentle reaching-out to death was new to him.
+
+"We must go," said Miriam.
+
+"Yes," he answered, but did not move.
+
+To him now, life seemed a shadow, day a white shadow; night,
+and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like BEING. 
+To be alive, to be urgent and insistent--that was NOT-TO-BE.  The
+highest of all was to melt out into the darkness and sway there,
+identified with the great Being.
+
+"The rain is coming in on us," said Miriam.
+
+He rose, and assisted her.
+
+"It is a pity," he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"To have to go.  I feel so still."
+
+"Still!" she repeated.
+
+"Stiller than I have ever been in my life."
+
+He was walking with his hand in hers.  She pressed his fingers,
+feeling a slight fear.  Now he seemed beyond her; she had a fear
+lest she should lose him.
+
+"The fir-trees are like presences on the darkness:  each one
+only a presence."
+
+She was afraid, and said nothing.
+
+"A sort of hush:  the whole night wondering and asleep: 
+I suppose that's what we do in death--sleep in wonder."
+
+She had been afraid before of the brute in him:  now of the mystic. 
+She trod beside him in silence.  The rain fell with a heavy "Hush!"
+on the trees.  At last they gained the cartshed.
+
+"Let us stay here awhile," he said.
+
+There was a sound of rain everywhere, smothering everything.
+
+"I feel so strange and still," he said; "along with everything."
+
+"Ay," she answered patiently.
+
+He seemed again unaware of her, though he held her hand close.
+
+"To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is
+our effort--to live effortless, a kind of curious sleep--that is
+very beautiful, I think; that is our after-life--our immortality."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes--and very beautiful to have."
+
+"You don't usually say that."
+
+"No."
+
+In a while they went indoors.  Everybody looked at them curiously. 
+He still kept the quiet, heavy look in his eyes, the stillness
+in his voice.  Instinctively, they all left him alone.
+
+About this time Miriam's grandmother, who lived in a tiny cottage
+in Woodlinton, fell ill, and the girl was sent to keep house. 
+It was a beautiful little place.  The cottage had a big garden in front,
+with red brick walls, against which the plum trees were nailed. 
+At the back another garden was separated from the fields by a tall
+old hedge.  It was very pretty.  Miriam had not much to do,
+so she found time for her beloved reading, and for writing little
+introspective pieces which interested her.
+
+At the holiday-time her grandmother, being better, was driven
+to Derby to stay with her daughter for a day or two.  She was a
+crotchety old lady, and might return the second day or the third;
+so Miriam stayed alone in the cottage, which also pleased her.
+
+Paul used often to cycle over, and they had as a rule
+peaceful and happy times.  He did not embarrass her much; but then
+on the Monday of the holiday he was to spend a whole day with her.
+
+It was perfect weather.  He left his mother, telling her where he
+was going.  She would be alone all the day.  It cast a shadow over him;
+but he had three days that were all his own, when he was
+going to do as he liked.  It was sweet to rush
+through the morning lanes on his bicycle.
+
+He got to the cottage at about eleven o'clock.  Miriam was busy
+preparing dinner.  She looked so perfectly in keeping with the
+little kitchen, ruddy and busy.  He kissed her and sat down to watch. 
+The room was small and cosy.  The sofa was covered all over with a
+sort of linen in squares of red and pale blue, old, much washed,
+but pretty.  There was a stuffed owl in a case over a corner cupboard. 
+The sunlight came through the leaves of the scented geraniums
+in the window.  She was cooking a chicken in his honour. 
+It was their cottage for the day, and they were man and wife. 
+He beat the eggs for her and peeled the potatoes.  He thought she
+gave a feeling of home almost like his mother; and no one could
+look more beautiful, with her tumbled curls, when she was flushed
+from the fire.
+
+The dinner was a great success.  Like a young husband, he carved. 
+They talked all the time with unflagging zest.  Then he wiped
+the dishes she had washed, and they went out down the fields. 
+There was a bright little brook that ran into a bog at the foot
+of a very steep bank.  Here they wandered, picking still a few
+marsh-marigolds and many big blue forget-me-nots.  Then she sat on
+the bank with her hands full of flowers, mostly golden water-blobs.
+As she put her face down into the marigolds, it was all overcast
+with a yellow shine.
+
+"Your face is bright," he said, "like a transfiguration."
+
+She looked at him, questioning.  He laughed pleadingly to her,
+laying his hands on hers.  Then he kissed her fingers, then her face.
+
+The world was all steeped in sunshine, and quite still,
+yet not asleep, but quivering with a kind of expectancy.
+
+"I have never seen anything more beautiful than this," he said. 
+He held her hand fast all the time.
+
+"And the water singing to itself as it runs--do you love it?" 
+She looked at him full of love.  His eyes were very dark,
+very bright.
+
+"Don't you think it's a great day?" he asked.
+
+She murmured her assent.  She WAS happy, and he saw it.
+
+"And our day--just between us," he said.
+
+They lingered a little while.  Then they stood up upon
+the sweet thyme, and he looked down at her simply.
+
+"Will you come?" he asked.
+
+They went back to the house, hand in hand, in silence. 
+The chickens came scampering down the path to her.  
+He locked the door, and they had the little house to themselves.
+
+He never forgot seeing her as she lay on the bed, when he was
+unfastening his collar.  First he saw only her beauty, and was blind
+with it.  She had the most beautiful body he had ever imagined. 
+He stood unable to move or speak, looking at her, his face half-smiling
+with wonder.  And then he wanted her, but as he went forward to her,
+her hands lifted in a little pleading movement, and he looked
+at her face, and stopped.  Her big brown eyes were watching him,
+still and resigned and loving; she lay as if she had given herself up
+to sacrifice:  there was her body for him; but the look at the back
+of her eyes, like a creature awaiting immolation, arrested him,
+and all his blood fell back.
+
+"You are sure you want me?" he asked, as if a cold shadow
+had come over him.
+
+"Yes, quite sure."
+
+She was very quiet, very calm.  She only realised that she
+was doing something for him.  He could hardly bear it.  She lay
+to be sacrificed for him because she loved him so much.  And he had
+to sacrifice her.  For a second, he wished he were sexless or dead. 
+Then he shut his eyes again to her, and his blood beat back again.
+
+And afterwards he loved her--loved her to the last fibre
+of his being.  He loved her.  But he wanted, somehow, to cry. 
+There was something he could not bear for her sake.  He stayed
+with her till quite late at night.  As he rode home he felt that
+he was finally initiated.  He was a youth no longer.  But why
+had he the dull pain in his soul?  Why did the thought of death,
+the after-life, seem so sweet and consoling?
+
+He spent the week with Miriam, and wore her out with his passion
+before it was gone.  He had always, almost wilfully, to put her out
+of count, and act from the brute strength of his own feelings. 
+And he could not do it often, and there remained afterwards always
+the sense of failure and of death.  If he were really with her,
+he had to put aside himself and his desire.  If he would have her,
+he had to put her aside.
+
+"When I come to you," he asked her, his eyes dark with pain
+and shame, "you don't really want me, do you?"
+
+"Ah, yes!" she replied quickly.
+
+He looked at her.
+
+"Nay," he said.
+
+She began to tremble.
+
+"You see," she said, taking his face and shutting it out
+against her shoulder--"you see--as we are--how can I get used to you? 
+It would come all right if we were married."
+
+He lifted her head, and looked at her.
+
+"You mean, now, it is always too much shock?"
+
+"Yes--and---"
+
+"You are always clenched against me."
+
+She was trembling with agitation.
+
+"You see," she said, "I'm not used to the thought---"
+
+"You are lately," he said.
+
+"But all my life.  Mother said to me:  'There is one thing
+in marriage that is always dreadful, but you have to bear it.' 
+And I believed it."
+
+"And still believe it," he said.
+
+"No!" she cried hastily.  "I believe, as you do, that loving,
+even in THAT way, is the high-water mark of living."
+
+"That doesn't alter the fact that you never want it."
+
+"No," she said, taking his head in her arms and rocking in despair. 
+"Don't say so!  You don't understand."  She rocked with pain. 
+"Don't I want your children?"
+
+"But not me."
+
+"How can you say so?  But we must be married to have children---"
+
+"Shall we be married, then?  I want you to have my children."
+
+He kissed her hand reverently.  She pondered sadly, watching him.
+
+"We are too young," she said at length.
+
+"Twenty-four and twenty-three---"
+
+"Not yet," she pleaded, as she rocked herself in distress.
+
+"When you will," he said.
+
+She bowed her head gravely.  The tone of hopelessness in
+which he said these things grieved her deeply.  It had always been
+a failure between them.  Tacitly, she acquiesced in what he felt.
+
+And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly one
+Sunday night, just as they were going to bed:
+
+"I shan't go so much to Miriam's, mother."
+
+She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything.
+
+"You please yourself," she said.
+
+So he went to bed.  But there was a new quietness about
+him which she had wondered at.  She almost guessed.  She would
+leave him alone, however.  Precipitation might spoil things. 
+She watched him in his loneliness, wondering where he would end. 
+He was sick, and much too quiet for him.  There was a perpetual little
+knitting of his brows, such as she had seen when he was a small baby,
+and which had been gone for many years.  Now it was the same again. 
+And she could do nothing for him.  He had to go on alone, make his
+own way.
+
+He continued faithful to Miriam.  For one day he had loved her
+utterly.  But it never came again.  The sense of failure grew stronger. 
+At first it was only a sadness.  Then he began to feel he could not
+go on.  He wanted to run, to go abroad, anything.  Gradually he ceased
+to ask her to have him.  Instead of drawing them together, it put
+them apart.  And then he realised, consciously, that it was no good. 
+It was useless trying:  it would never be a success between them.
+
+For some months he had seen very little of Clara.  They had
+occasionally walked out for half an hour at dinner-time.  But he always
+reserved himself for Miriam.  With Clara, however, his brow cleared,
+and he was gay again.  She treated him indulgently, as if he were
+a child.  He thought he did not mind.  But deep below the surface
+it piqued him.
+
+Sometimes Miriam said:
+
+"What about Clara?  I hear nothing of her lately."
+
+"I walked with her about twenty minutes yesterday," he replied.
+
+"And what did she talk about?"
+
+"I don't know.  I suppose I did all the jawing--I usually do. 
+I think I was telling her about the strike, and how the women
+took it."
+
+"Yes."
+
+So he gave the account of himself.
+
+But insidiously, without his knowing it, the warmth he felt
+for Clara drew him away from Miriam, for whom he felt responsible,
+and to whom he felt he belonged.  He thought he was being quite
+faithful to her.  It was not easy to estimate exactly the strength
+and warmth of one's feelings for a woman till they have run away
+with one.
+
+He began to give more time to his men friends.  There was Jessop,
+at the art school; Swain, who was chemistry demonstrator
+at the university; Newton, who was a teacher; besides Edgar and
+Miriam's younger brothers.  Pleading work, he sketched and studied
+with Jessop.  He called in the university for Swain, and the two went
+"down town" together.  Having come home in the train with Newton,
+he called and had a game of billiards with him in the Moon
+and Stars.  If he gave to Miriam the excuse of his men friends,
+he felt quite justified.  His mother began to be relieved. 
+He always told her where he had been.
+
+During the summer Clara wore sometimes a dress of soft cotton
+stuff with loose sleeves.  When she lifted her hands, her sleeves
+fell back, and her beautiful strong arms shone out.
+
+"Half a minute," he cried.  "Hold your arm still."
+
+He made sketches of her hand and arm, and the drawings
+contained some of the fascination the real thing had for him. 
+Miriam, who always went scrupulously through his books and papers,
+saw the drawings.
+
+"I think Clara has such beautiful arms," he said.
+
+"Yes!  When did you draw them?"
+
+"On Tuesday, in the work-room.  You know, I've got a corner
+where I can work.  Often I can do every single thing they need
+in the department, before dinner.  Then I work for myself
+in the afternoon, and just see to things at night."
+
+"Yes," she said, turning the leaves of his sketch-book.
+
+Frequently he hated Miriam.  He hated her as she bent forward
+and pored over his things.  He hated her way of patiently casting
+him up, as if he were an endless psychological account.  When he
+was with her, he hated her for having got him, and yet not got him,
+and he tortured her.  She took all and gave nothing, he said.  At least,
+she gave no living warmth.  She was never alive, and giving off life. 
+Looking for her was like looking for something which did not exist. 
+She was only his conscience, not his mate.  He hated her violently,
+and was more cruel to her.  They dragged on till the next summer. 
+He saw more and more of Clara.
+
+At last he spoke.  He had been sitting working at home
+one evening.  There was between him and his mother a peculiar condition
+of people frankly finding fault with each other.  Mrs. Morel was
+strong on her feet again.  He was not going to stick to Miriam. 
+Very well; then she would stand aloof till he said something. 
+It had been coming a long time, this bursting of the storm in him, 
+when he would come back to her.  This evening there was between them 
+a peculiar condition of suspense.  He worked feverishly and mechanically,
+so that he could escape from himself.  It grew late.  Through the
+open door, stealthily, came the scent of madonna lilies, almost as
+if it were prowling abroad.  Suddenly he got up and went out of doors.
+
+The beauty of the night made him want to shout.  A half-moon,
+dusky gold, was sinking behind the black sycamore at the end of
+the garden, making the sky dull purple with its glow.  Nearer, a dim
+white fence of lilies went across the garden, and the air all round
+seemed to stir with scent, as if it were alive.  He went across
+the bed of pinks, whose keen perfume came sharply across the rocking,
+heavy scent of the lilies, and stood alongside the white barrier
+of flowers.  They flagged all loose, as if they were panting. 
+The scent made him drunk.  He went down to the field to watch
+the moon sink under.
+
+A corncrake in the hay-close called insistently.  The moon
+slid quite quickly downwards, growing more flushed.  Behind him
+the great flowers leaned as if they were calling.  And then,
+like a shock, he caught another perfume, something raw and coarse. 
+Hunting round, he found the purple iris, touched their fleshy throats
+and their dark, grasping hands.  At any rate, he had found something. 
+They stood stiff in the darkness.  Their scent was brutal. 
+The moon was melting down upon the crest of the hill.  It was gone;
+all was dark.  The corncrake called still.
+
+Breaking off a pink, he suddenly went indoors.
+
+"Come, my boy," said his mother.  "I'm sure it's time you went
+to bed."
+
+He stood with the pink against his lips.
+
+"I shall break off with Miriam, mother," he answered calmly.
+
+She looked up at him over her spectacles.  He was staring back
+at her, unswerving.  She met his eyes for a moment, then took off
+her glasses.  He was white.  The male was up in him, dominant. 
+She did not want to see him too clearly.
+
+"But I thought---" she began.
+
+"Well," he answered, "I don't love her.  I don't want to marry
+her--so I shall have done."
+
+"But," exclaimed his mother, amazed, "I thought lately you
+had made up your mind to have her, and so I said nothing."
+
+"I had--I wanted to--but now I don't want.  It's no good. 
+I shall break off on Sunday.  I ought to, oughtn't I?"
+
+"You know best.  You know I said so long ago."
+
+"I can't help that now.  I shall break off on Sunday."
+
+"Well," said his mother, "I think it will be best.  But lately
+I decided you had made up your mind to have her, so I said nothing,
+and should have said nothing.  But I say as I have always said,
+I DON'T think she is suited to you."
+
+"On Sunday I break off," he said, smelling the pink. 
+He put the flower in his mouth.  Unthinking, he bared his teeth,
+closed them on the blossom slowly, and had a mouthful of petals. 
+These he spat into the fire, kissed his mother, and went to bed.
+
+On Sunday he went up to the farm in the early afternoon. 
+He had written Miriam that they would walk over the fields to Hucknall. 
+His mother was very tender with him.  He said nothing.  But she
+saw the effort it was costing.  The peculiar set look on his face
+stilled her.
+
+"Never mind, my son," she said.  "You will be so much better
+when it is all over.  "
+
+Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and resentment. 
+He did not want sympathy.
+
+Miriam met him at the lane-end.  She was wearing a new dress
+of figured muslin that had short sleeves.  Those short sleeves,
+and Miriam's brown-skinned arms beneath them--such pitiful, resigned
+arms--gave him so much pain that they helped to make him cruel. 
+She had made herself look so beautiful and fresh for him.  She seemed
+to blossom for him alone.  Every time he looked at her--a mature young
+woman now, and beautiful in her new dress--it hurt so much that his
+heart seemed almost to be bursting with the restraint he put on it. 
+But he had decided, and it was irrevocable.
+
+On the hills they sat down, and he lay with his head in her lap,
+whilst she fingered his hair.  She knew that "he was not there,"
+as she put it.  Often, when she had him with her, she looked for him,
+and could not find him.  But this afternoon she was not prepared.
+
+It was nearly five o'clock when he told her.  They were sitting
+on the bank of a stream, where the lip of turf hung over a hollow
+bank of yellow earth, and he was hacking away with a stick, as he
+did when he was perturbed and cruel.
+
+"I have been thinking," he said, "we ought to break off."
+
+"Why?" she cried in surprise.
+
+"Because it's no good going on."
+
+"Why is it no good?"
+
+"It isn't.  I don't want to marry.  I don't want ever to marry. 
+And if we're not going to marry, it's no good going on."
+
+"But why do you say this now?"
+
+"Because I've made up my mind."
+
+"And what about these last months, and the things you told
+me then?"
+
+"I can't help it!  I don't want to go on."
+
+"You don't want any more of me?"
+
+"I want us to break off--you be free of me, I free of you."
+
+"And what about these last months?"
+
+"I don't know.  I've not told you anything but what I thought
+was true."
+
+"Then why are you different now?"
+
+"I'm not--I'm the same--only I know it's no good going on."
+
+"You haven't told me why it's no good."
+
+"Because I don't want to go on--and I don't want to marry."
+
+"How many times have you offered to marry me, and I wouldn't?"
+
+"I know; but I want us to break off."
+
+There was silence for a moment or two, while he dug viciously at
+the earth.  She bent her head, pondering.  He was an unreasonable child. 
+He was like an infant which, when it has drunk its fill, throws away
+and smashes the cup.  She looked at him, feeling she could get hold
+of him and WRING some consistency out of him.  But she was helpless. 
+Then she cried:
+
+"I have said you were only fourteen--you are only FOUR!"
+
+He still dug at the earth viciously.  He heard.
+
+"You are a child of four," she repeated in her anger.
+
+He did not answer, but said in his heart:  "All right;
+if I'm a child of four, what do you want me for?  I don't want
+another mother."  But he said nothing to her, and there was silence.
+
+"And have you told your people?" she asked.
+
+"I have told my mother."
+
+There was another long interval of silence.
+
+"Then what do you WANT?" she asked.
+
+"Why, I want us to separate.  We have lived on each other all
+these years; now let us stop.  I will go my own way without you,
+and you will go your way without me.  You will have an independent
+life of your own then."
+
+There was in it some truth that, in spite of her bitterness,
+she could not help registering.  She knew she felt in a sort of
+bondage to him, which she hated because she could not control it. 
+She hated her love for him from the moment it grew too strong
+for her.  And, deep down, she had hated him because she loved
+him and he dominated her.  She had resisted his domination. 
+She had fought to keep herself free of him in the last issue. 
+And she was free of him, even more than he of her.
+
+"And," he continued, "we shall always be more or less
+each other's work.  You have done a lot for me, I for you. 
+Now let us start and live by ourselves."
+
+"What do you want to do?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing--only to be free," he answered.
+
+She, however, knew in her heart that Clara's influence was
+over him to liberate him.  But she said nothing.
+
+"And what have I to tell my mother?" she asked.
+
+"I told my mother," he answered, "that I was breaking off--clean
+and altogether."
+
+"I shall not tell them at home," she said.
+
+Frowning, "You please yourself," he said.
+
+He knew he had landed her in a nasty hole, and was leaving
+her in the lurch.  It angered him.
+
+"Tell them you wouldn't and won't marry me, and have broken off,"
+he said.  "It's true enough."
+
+She bit her finger moodily.  She thought over their whole affair. 
+She had known it would come to this; she had seen it all along. 
+It chimed with her bitter expectation.
+
+"Always--it has always been so!" she cried.  "It has been
+one long battle between us--you fighting away from me."
+
+It came from her unawares, like a flash of lightning. 
+The man's heart stood still.  Was this how she saw it?
+
+"But we've had SOME perfect hours, SOME perfect times,
+when we were together!" he pleaded.
+
+"Never!" she cried; "never!  It has always been you fighting
+me off."
+
+"Not always--not at first!" he pleaded.
+
+"Always, from the very beginning--always the same!"
+
+She had finished, but she had done enough.  He sat aghast. 
+He had wanted to say:  "It has been good, but it is at an end." 
+And she--she whose love he had believed in when he had despised
+himself--denied that their love had ever been love.  "He had
+always fought away from her?"  Then it had been monstrous. 
+There had never been anything really between them; all the time
+he had been imagining something where there was nothing.  And she
+had known.  She had known so much, and had told him so little. 
+She had known all the time.  All the time this was at the bottom
+of her!
+
+He sat silent in bitterness.  At last the whole affair appeared
+in a cynical aspect to him.  She had really played with him,
+not he with her.  She had hidden all her condemnation from him,
+had flattered him, and despised him.  She despised him now. 
+He grew intellectual and cruel.
+
+"You ought to marry a man who worships you," he said; "then you
+could do as you liked with him.  Plenty of men will worship you,
+if you get on the private side of their natures.  You ought to marry
+one such.  They would never fight you off."
+
+"Thank you!" she said.  "But don't advise me to marry someone
+else any more.  You've done it before."
+
+"Very well," he said; "I will say no more."
+
+He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of
+giving one.  Their eight years of friendship and love, THE eight
+years of his life, were nullified.
+
+"When did you think of this?" she asked.
+
+"I thought definitely on Thursday night."
+
+"I knew it was coming," she said.
+
+That pleased him bitterly.  "Oh, very well!  If she knew then
+it doesn't come as a surprise to her," he thought.
+
+"And have you said anything to Clara?" she asked.
+
+"No; but I shall tell her now."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Do you remember the things you said this time last year,
+in my grandmother's house--nay last month even?"
+
+"Yes," he said; "I do!  And I meant them!  I can't help
+that it's failed."
+
+"It has failed because you want something else."
+
+"It would have failed whether or not.  YOU never believed
+in me."
+
+She laughed strangely.
+
+He sat in silence.  He was full of a feeling that she had
+deceived him.  She had despised him when he thought she worshipped him. 
+She had let him say wrong things, and had not contradicted him. 
+She had let him fight alone.  But it stuck in his throat that she had
+despised him whilst he thought she worshipped him.  She should have
+told him when she found fault with him.  She had not played fair. 
+He hated her.  All these years she had treated him as if he were
+a hero, and thought of him secretly as an infant, a foolish child. 
+Then why had she left the foolish child to his folly?  His heart was
+hard against her.
+
+She sat full of bitterness.  She had known--oh, well she
+had known!  All the time he was away from her she had summed
+him up, seen his littleness, his meanness, and his folly. 
+Even she had guarded her soul against him.  She was not overthrown,
+not prostrated, not even much hurt.  She had known.  Only why,
+as he sat there, had he still this strange dominance over her? 
+His very movements fascinated her as if she were hypnotised by him. 
+Yet he was despicable, false, inconsistent, and mean.  Why this bondage
+for her?  Why was it the movement of his arm stirred her as nothing
+else in the world could?  Why was she fastened to him?  Why, even now,
+if he looked at her and commanded her, would she have to obey? 
+She would obey him in his trifling commands.  But once he was obeyed,
+then she had him in her power, she knew, to lead him where she would. 
+She was sure of herself.  Only, this new influence!  Ah, he was
+not a man!  He was a baby that cries for the newest toy. 
+And all the attachment of his soul would not keep him.  Very well,
+he would have to go.  But he would come back when he had tired of his
+new sensation.
+
+He hacked at the earth till she was fretted to death.  She rose. 
+He sat flinging lumps of earth in the stream.
+
+"We will go and have tea here?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+They chattered over irrelevant subjects during tea. 
+He held forth on the love of ornament--the cottage parlour moved him
+thereto--and its connection with aesthetics.  She was cold and quiet. 
+As they walked home, she asked:
+
+"And we shall not see each other?"
+
+"No--or rarely," he answered.
+
+"Nor write?" she asked, almost sarcastically.
+
+"As you will," he answered.  "We're not strangers--never
+should be, whatever happened.  I will write to you now and again. 
+You please yourself."
+
+"I see!" she answered cuttingly.
+
+But he was at that stage at which nothing else hurts. 
+He had made a great cleavage in his life.  He had had a great shock
+when she had told him their love had been always a conflict. 
+Nothing more mattered.  If it never had been much, there was no need
+to make a fuss that it was ended.
+
+He left her at the lane-end.  As she went home, solitary,
+in her new frock, having her people to face at the other end,
+he stood still with shame and pain in the highroad, thinking of
+the suffering he caused her.
+
+In the reaction towards restoring his self-esteem, he went
+into the Willow Tree for a drink.  There were four girls who had
+been out for the day, drinking a modest glass of port.  They had
+some chocolates on the table.  Paul sat near with his whisky. 
+He noticed the girls whispering and nudging.  Presently one,
+a bonny dark hussy, leaned to him and said:
+
+"Have a chocolate?"
+
+The others laughed loudly at her impudence.
+
+"All right," said Paul.  "Give me a hard one--nut.  I don't
+like creams."
+
+"Here you are, then," said the girl; "here's an almond for you."
+
+She held the sweet between her fingers.  He opened his mouth. 
+She popped it in, and blushed.
+
+"You ARE nice!" he said.
+
+"Well," she answered, "we thought you looked overcast,
+and they dared me offer you a chocolate."
+
+"I don't mind if I have another--another sort," he said.
+
+And presently they were all laughing together.
+
+It was nine o'clock when he got home, falling dark.  He entered
+the house in silence.  His mother, who had been waiting,
+rose anxiously.
+
+"I told her," he said.
+
+"I'm glad," replied the mother, with great relief.
+
+He hung up his cap wearily.
+
+"I said we'd have done altogether," he said.
+
+"That's right, my son," said the mother.  "It's hard for her now,
+but best in the long run.  I know.  You weren't suited for her."
+
+He laughed shakily as he sat down.
+
+"I've had such a lark with some girls in a pub," he said.
+
+His mother looked at him.  He had forgotten Miriam now.  He told
+her about the girls in the Willow Tree.  Mrs. Morel looked at him. 
+It seemed unreal, his gaiety.  At the back of it was too much horror
+and misery.
+
+"Now have some supper," she said very gently.
+
+Afterwards he said wistfully:
+
+"She never thought she'd have me, mother, not from the first,
+and so she's not disappointed."
+
+"I'm afraid," said his mother, "she doesn't give up hopes
+of you yet."
+
+"No," he said, "perhaps not."
+
+"You'll find it's better to have done," she said.
+
+"I don't know," he said desperately.
+
+"Well, leave her alone," replied his mother.  So he left her,
+and she was alone.  Very few people cared for her, and she for very
+few people.  She remained alone with herself, waiting.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+PASSION
+
+HE was gradually making it possible to earn a livelihood by
+his art.  Liberty's had taken several of his painted designs
+on various stuffs, and he could sell designs for embroideries,
+for altar-cloths, and similar things, in one or two places. 
+It was not very much he made at present, but he might extend it. 
+He had also made friends with the designer for a pottery firm,
+and was gaining some knowledge of his new acquaintance's art.  
+The applied arts interested him very much.  At the same time
+he laboured slowly at his pictures.  He loved to paint large figures, 
+full of light, but not merely made up of lights and cast shadows, 
+like the impressionists; rather definite figures that had a certain 
+luminous quality, like some of Michael Angelo's people.  And these 
+he fitted into a landscape, in what he thought true proportion. 
+He worked a great deal from memory, using everybody he knew. 
+He believed firmly in his work, that it was good and valuable. 
+In spite of fits of depression, shrinking, everything, he believed
+in his work.
+
+He was twenty-four when he said his first confident thing
+to his mother.
+
+"Mother," he said, "I s'll make a painter that they'll attend to."
+
+She sniffed in her quaint fashion.  It was like a half-pleased
+shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"Very well, my boy, we'll see," she said.
+
+"You shall see, my pigeon!  You see if you're not swanky
+one of these days!"
+
+"I'm quite content, my boy," she smiled.
+
+"But you'll have to alter.  Look at you with Minnie!"
+
+Minnie was the small servant, a girl of fourteen.
+
+"And what about Minnie?" asked Mrs. Morel, with dignity.
+
+"I heard her this morning:  'Eh, Mrs. Morel!  I was going
+to do that,' when you went out in the rain for some coal," he said. 
+"That looks a lot like your being able to manage servants!"
+
+"Well, it was only the child's niceness," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+"And you apologising to her:  'You can't do two things at once,
+can you?'"
+
+"She WAS busy washing up," replied Mrs. Morel.
+
+"And what did she say?  'It could easy have waited a bit. 
+Now look how your feet paddle!'"
+
+"Yes--brazen young baggage!" said Mrs. Morel, smiling.
+
+He looked at his mother, laughing.  She was quite warm and
+rosy again with love of him.  It seemed as if all the sunshine
+were on her for a moment.  He continued his work gladly. 
+She seemed so well when she was happy that he forgot her grey hair.
+
+And that year she went with him to the Isle of Wight for
+a holiday.  It was too exciting for them both, and too beautiful. 
+Mrs. Morel was full of joy and wonder.  But he would have her
+walk with him more than she was able.  She had a bad fainting bout. 
+So grey her face was, so blue her mouth!  It was agony to him. 
+He felt as if someone were pushing a knife in his chest.  Then she
+was better again, and he forgot.  But the anxiety remained inside him,
+like a wound that did not close.
+
+After leaving Miriam he went almost straight to Clara. 
+On the Monday following the day of the rupture he went down to
+the work-room.  She looked up at him and smiled.  They had grown
+very intimate unawares.  She saw a new brightness about him.
+
+"Well, Queen of Sheba!" he said, laughing.
+
+"But why?" she asked.
+
+"I think it suits you.  You've got a new frock on."
+
+She flushed, asking:
+
+"And what of it?"
+
+"Suits you--awfully!  I could design you a dress."
+
+"How would it be?"
+
+He stood in front of her, his eyes glittering as he expounded. 
+He kept her eyes fixed with his.  Then suddenly he took hold of her. 
+She half-started back.  He drew the stuff of her blouse tighter,
+smoothed it over her breast.
+
+"More SO!" he explained.
+
+But they were both of them flaming with blushes, and immediately
+he ran away.  He had touched her.  His whole body was quivering
+with the sensation.
+
+There was already a sort of secret understanding between them. 
+The next evening he went to the cinematograph with her for a few
+minutes before train-time.  As they sat, he saw her hand lying
+near him.  For some moments he dared not touch it.  The pictures
+danced and dithered.  Then he took her hand in his.  It was large
+and firm; it filled his grasp.  He held it fast.  She neither
+moved nor made any sign.  When they came out his train was due. 
+He hesitated.
+
+"Good-night," she said.  He darted away across the road.
+
+The next day he came again, talking to her.  She was rather
+superior with him.
+
+"Shall we go a walk on Monday?" he asked.
+
+She turned her face aside.
+
+"Shall you tell Miriam?" she replied sarcastically.
+
+"I have broken off with her," he said.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Last Sunday."
+
+"You quarrelled?"
+
+"No!  I had made up my mind.  I told her quite definitely I
+should consider myself free."
+
+Clara did not answer, and he returned to his work.  She was
+so quiet and so superb!
+
+On the Saturday evening he asked her to come and drink coffee
+with him in a restaurant, meeting him after work was over.  She came,
+looking very reserved and very distant.  He had three-quarters
+of an hour to train-time.
+
+"We will walk a little while," he said.
+
+She agreed, and they went past the Castle into the Park. 
+He was afraid of her.  She walked moodily at his side, with a kind
+of resentful, reluctant, angry walk.  He was afraid to take her hand.
+
+"Which way shall we go?" he asked as they walked in darkness.
+
+"I don't mind."
+
+"Then we'll go up the steps."
+
+He suddenly turned round.  They had passed the Park steps. 
+She stood still in resentment at his suddenly abandoning her. 
+He looked for her.  She stood aloof.  He caught her suddenly in
+his arms, held her strained for a moment, kissed her.  Then he let
+her go.
+
+"Come along," he said, penitent.
+
+She followed him.  He took her hand and kissed her
+finger-tips.  They went in silence.  When they came to the light,
+he let go her hand.  Neither spoke till they reached the station. 
+Then they looked each other in the eyes.
+
+"Good-night," she said.
+
+And he went for his train.  His body acted mechanically. 
+People talked to him.  He heard faint echoes answering them. 
+He was in a delirium.  He felt that he would go mad if Monday did
+not come at once.  On Monday he would see her again.  All himself
+was pitched there, ahead.  Sunday intervened.  He could not bear it. 
+He could not see her till Monday.  And Sunday intervened--hour
+after hour of tension.  He wanted to beat his head against the
+door of the carriage.  But he sat still.  He drank some whisky
+on the way home, but it only made it worse.  His mother must not
+be upset, that was all.  He dissembled, and got quickly to bed. 
+There he sat, dressed, with his chin on his knees, staring out of
+the window at the far hill, with its few lights.  He neither thought nor slept,
+but sat perfectly still, staring.  And when at last he was so cold that
+he came to himself, he found his watch had stopped at half-past two. 
+It was after three o'clock.  He was exhausted, but still there was
+the torment of knowing it was only Sunday morning.  He went to bed
+and slept.  Then he cycled all day long, till he was fagged out. 
+And he scarcely knew where he had been.  But the day after was Monday. 
+He slept till four o'clock.  Then he lay and thought.  He was coming
+nearer to himself--he could see himself, real, somewhere in front. 
+She would go a walk with him in the afternoon.  Afternoon!  It seemed
+years ahead.
+
+Slowly the hours crawled.  His father got up; he heard him
+pottering about.  Then the miner set off to the pit, his heavy
+boots scraping the yard.  Cocks were still crowing.  A cart
+went down the road.  His mother got up.  She knocked the fire. 
+Presently she called him softly.  He answered as if he were asleep. 
+This shell of himself did well.
+
+He was walking to the station--another mile!  The train
+was near Nottingham.  Would it stop before the tunnels? 
+But it did not matter; it would get there before dinner-time.  He
+was at Jordan's.  She would come in half an hour.  At any rate,
+she would be near.  He had done the letters.  She would be there. 
+Perhaps she had not come.  He ran downstairs.  Ah! he saw her
+through the glass door.  Her shoulders stooping a little to her
+work made him feel he could not go forward; he could not stand. 
+He went in.  He was pale, nervous, awkward, and quite cold. 
+Would she misunderstand him?  He could not write his real self
+with this shell.
+
+"And this afternoon," he struggled to say.  "You will come?"
+
+"I think so," she replied, murmuring.
+
+He stood before her, unable to say a word.  She hid her
+face from him.  Again came over him the feeling that he would
+lose consciousness.  He set his teeth and went upstairs.  He had
+done everything correctly yet, and he would do so.  All the morning
+things seemed a long way off, as they do to a man under chloroform. 
+He himself seemed under a tight band of constraint.  Then there was his
+other self, in the distance, doing things, entering stuff in a ledger,
+and he watched that far-off him carefully to see he made no mistake.
+
+But the ache and strain of it could not go on much longer. 
+He worked incessantly.  Still it was only twelve o'clock.  As if he
+had nailed his clothing against the desk, he stood there and worked,
+forcing every stroke out of himself.  It was a quarter to one;
+he could clear away.  Then he ran downstairs.
+
+"You will meet me at the Fountain at two o'clock," he said.
+
+"I can't be there till half-past."
+
+"Yes!" he said.
+
+She saw his dark, mad eyes.
+
+"I will try at a quarter past."
+
+And he had to be content.  He went and got some dinner. 
+All the time he was still under chloroform, and every minute
+was stretched out indefinitely.  He walked miles of streets. 
+Then he thought he would be late at the meeting-place.  He was at
+the Fountain at five past two.  The torture of the next quarter
+of an hour was refined beyond expression.  It was the anguish
+of combining the living self with the shell.  Then he saw her. 
+She came!  And he was there.
+
+"You are late," he said.
+
+"Only five minutes," she answered.
+
+"I'd never have done it to you," he laughed.
+
+She was in a dark blue costume.  He looked at her beautiful figure.
+
+"You want some flowers," he said, going to the nearest florist's.
+
+She followed him in silence.  He bought her a bunch of scarlet,
+brick-red carnations.  She put them in her coat, flushing.
+
+"That's a fine colour!" he said.
+
+"I'd rather have had something softer," she said.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Do you feel like a blot of vermilion walking down the street?"
+he said.
+
+She hung her head, afraid of the people they met. 
+He looked sideways at her as they walked.  There was a wonderful
+close down on her face near the ear that he wanted to touch. 
+And a certain heaviness, the heaviness of a very full ear of
+corn that dips slightly in the wind, that there was about her,
+made his brain spin.  He seemed to be spinning down the street,
+everything going round.
+
+As they sat in the tramcar, she leaned her heavy shoulder
+against him, and he took her hand.  He felt himself coming round
+from the anaesthetic, beginning to breathe.  Her ear, half-hidden among
+her blonde hair, was near to him.  The temptation to kiss it was
+almost too great.  But there were other people on top of the car. 
+It still remained to him to kiss it.  After all, he was not himself,
+he was some attribute of hers, like the sunshine that fell on her.
+
+He looked quickly away.  It had been raining.  The big bluff
+of the Castle rock was streaked with rain, as it reared above
+the flat of the town.  They crossed the wide, black space of the
+Midland Railway, and passed the cattle enclosure that stood out white. 
+Then they ran down sordid Wilford Road.
+
+She rocked slightly to the tram's motion, and as she leaned
+against him, rocked upon him.  He was a vigorous, slender man,
+with exhaustless energy.  His face was rough, with rough-hewn features,
+like the common people's; but his eyes under the deep brows were
+so full of life that they fascinated her.  They seemed to dance,
+and yet they were still trembling on the finest balance of laughter. 
+His mouth the same was just going to spring into a laugh of triumph,
+yet did not.  There was a sharp suspense about him.  She bit her
+lip moodily.  His hand was hard clenched over hers.
+
+They paid their two halfpennies at the turnstile and crossed
+the bridge.  The Trent was very full.  It swept silent and insidious
+under the bridge, travelling in a soft body.  There had been a great
+deal of rain.  On the river levels were flat gleams of flood water. 
+The sky was grey, with glisten of silver here and there.  In Wilford
+churchyard the dahlias were sodden with rain--wet black-crimson balls. 
+No one was on the path that went along the green river meadow,
+along the elm-tree colonnade.
+
+There was the faintest haze over the silvery-dark water
+and the green meadow-bank, and the elm-trees that were spangled
+with gold.  The river slid by in a body, utterly silent and swift,
+intertwining among itself like some subtle, complex creature. 
+Clara walked moodily beside him.
+
+"Why," she asked at length, in rather a jarring tone, "did you
+leave Miriam?"
+
+He frowned.
+
+"Because I WANTED to leave her," he said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I didn't want to go on with her.  And I didn't want
+to marry."
+
+She was silent for a moment.  They picked their way down the muddy path. 
+Drops of water fell from the elm-trees.
+
+"You didn't want to marry Miriam, or you didn't want to marry
+at all?" she asked.
+
+"Both," he answered--"both!"
+
+They had to manoeuvre to get to the stile, because of the pools
+of water.
+
+"And what did she say?"  Clara asked.
+
+"Miriam?  She said I was a baby of four, and that I always
+HAD battled her off."
+
+Clara pondered over this for a time.
+
+"But you have really been going with her for some time?"
+she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now you don't want any more of her?"
+
+"No.  I know it's no good."
+
+She pondered again.
+
+"Don't you think you've treated her rather badly?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; I ought to have dropped it years back.  But it would
+have been no good going on.  Two wrongs don't make a right."
+
+"How old ARE you?"  Clara asked.
+
+"Twenty-five."
+
+"And I am thirty," she said.
+
+"I know you are."
+
+"I shall be thirty-one--or AM I thirty-one?"
+
+"I neither know nor care.  What does it matter!"
+
+They were at the entrance to the Grove.  The wet, red track,
+already sticky with fallen leaves, went up the steep bank between
+the grass.  On either side stood the elm-trees like pillars along
+a great aisle, arching over and making high up a roof from which the
+dead leaves fell.  All was empty and silent and wet.  She stood on
+top of the stile, and he held both her hands.  Laughing, she looked
+down into his eyes.  Then she leaped.  Her breast came against his;
+he held her, and covered her face with kisses.
+
+They went on up the slippery, steep red path.  Presently she
+released his hand and put it round her waist.
+
+"You press the vein in my arm, holding it so tightly,"
+she said.
+
+They walked along.  His finger-tips felt the rocking of her breast. 
+All was silent and deserted.  On the left the red wet plough-land
+showed through the doorways between the elm-boles and
+their branches.  On the right, looking down, they could see the tree-tops
+of elms growing far beneath them, hear occasionally the gurgle of
+the river.  Sometimes there below they caught glimpses of the full,
+soft-sliding Trent, and of water-meadows dotted with small cattle.
+
+"It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to come,"
+he said.
+
+But he was watching her throat below the ear, where the flush was
+fusing into the honey-white, and her mouth that pouted disconsolate. 
+She stirred against him as she walked, and his body was like
+a taut string.
+
+Halfway up the big colonnade of elms, where the Grove rose
+highest above the river, their forward movement faltered to an end. 
+He led her across to the grass, under the trees at the edge of the path. 
+The cliff of red earth sloped swiftly down, through trees and bushes,
+to the river that glimmered and was dark between the foliage. 
+The far-below water-meadows were very green.  He and she stood leaning
+against one another, silent, afraid, their bodies touching all along. 
+There came a quick gurgle from the river below.
+
+"Why," he asked at length, "did you hate Baxter Dawes?"
+
+She turned to him with a splendid movement.  Her mouth was
+offered him, and her throat; her eyes were half-shut; her breast
+was tilted as if it asked for him.  He flashed with a small laugh,
+shut his eyes, and met her in a long, whole kiss.  Her mouth fused
+with his; their bodies were sealed and annealed.  It was some minutes
+before they withdrew.  They were standing beside the public path.
+
+"Will you go down to the river?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him, leaving herself in his hands.  He went
+over the brim of the declivity and began to climb down.
+
+"It is slippery," he said.
+
+"Never mind," she replied.
+
+The red clay went down almost sheer.  He slid, went from one
+tuft of grass to the next, hanging on to the bushes, making for a
+little platform at the foot of a tree.  There he waited for her,
+laughing with excitement.  Her shoes were clogged with red earth. 
+It was hard for her.  He frowned.  At last he caught her hand,
+and she stood beside him.  The cliff rose above them and fell away
+below.  Her colour was up, her eyes flashed.  He looked at the big
+drop below them.
+
+"It's risky," he said; "or messy, at any rate.  Shall we
+go back?"
+
+"Not for my sake," she said quickly.
+
+"All right.  You see, I can't help you; I should only hinder. 
+Give me that little parcel and your gloves.  Your poor shoes!"
+
+They stood perched on the face of the declivity, under the trees.
+
+"Well, I'll go again," he said.
+
+Away he went, slipping, staggering, sliding to the next tree,
+into which he fell with a slam that nearly shook the breath out of him. 
+She came after cautiously, hanging on to the twigs and grasses. 
+So they descended, stage by stage, to the river's brink.  There,
+to his disgust, the flood had eaten away the path, and the red
+decline ran straight into the water.  He dug in his heels and brought
+himself up violently.  The string of the parcel broke with a snap;
+the brown parcel bounded down, leaped into the water, and sailed
+smoothly away.  He hung on to his tree.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" he cried crossly.  Then he laughed. 
+She was coming perilously down.
+
+"Mind!" he warned her.  He stood with his back to the tree, 
+waiting.  "Come now," he called, opening his arms.
+
+She let herself run.  He caught her, and together they stood
+watching the dark water scoop at the raw edge of the bank. 
+The parcel had sailed out of sight.
+
+"It doesn't matter," she said.
+
+He held her close and kissed her.  There was only room
+for their four feet.
+
+"It's a swindle!" he said.  "But there's a rut where a man
+has been, so if we go on I guess we shall find the path again."
+
+The river slid and twined its great volume.  On the other bank
+cattle were feeding on the desolate flats.  The cliff rose high
+above Paul and Clara on their right hand.  They stood against
+the tree in the watery silence.
+
+"Let us try going forward," he said; and they struggled
+in the red clay along the groove a man's nailed boots had made. 
+They were hot and flushed.  Their barkled shoes hung heavy on
+their steps.  At last they found the broken path.  It was littered
+with rubble from the water, but at any rate it was easier. 
+They cleaned their boots with twigs.  His heart was beating thick
+and fast.
+
+Suddenly, coming on to the little level, he saw two figures
+of men standing silent at the water's edge.  His heart leaped. 
+They were fishing.  He turned and put his hand up warningly to Clara. 
+She hesitated, buttoned her coat.  The two went on together.
+
+The fishermen turned curiously to watch the two intruders
+on their privacy and solitude.  They had had a fire, but it was
+nearly out.  All kept perfectly still.  The men turned again to
+their fishing, stood over the grey glinting river like statues. 
+Clara went with bowed head, flushing; he was laughing to himself. 
+Directly they passed out of sight behind the willows.
+
+"Now they ought to be drowned," said Paul softly.
+
+Clara did not answer.  They toiled forward along a tiny path
+on the river's lip.  Suddenly it vanished.  The bank was sheer red
+solid clay in front of them, sloping straight into the river. 
+He stood and cursed beneath his breath, setting his teeth.
+
+"It's impossible!" said Clara.
+
+He stood erect, looking round.  Just ahead were two islets
+in the stream, covered with osiers.  But they were unattainable. 
+The cliff came down like a sloping wall from far above their heads. 
+Behind, not far back, were the fishermen.  Across the river the
+distant cattle fed silently in the desolate afternoon.  He cursed
+again deeply under his breath.  He gazed up the great steep bank. 
+Was there no hope but to scale back to the public path?
+
+"Stop a minute," he said, and, digging his heels sideways
+into the steep bank of red clay, he began nimbly to mount. 
+He looked across at every tree-foot. At last he found what he wanted. 
+Two beech-trees side by side on the hill held a little level on the
+upper face between their roots.  It was littered with damp leaves,
+but it would do.  The fishermen were perhaps sufficiently out of sight. 
+He threw down his rainproof and waved to her to come.
+
+She toiled to his side.  Arriving there, she looked at him
+heavily, dumbly, and laid her head on his shoulder.  He held her fast
+as he looked round.  They were safe enough from all but the small,
+lonely cows over the river.  He sunk his mouth on her throat,
+where he felt her heavy pulse beat under his lips.  Everything was
+perfectly still.  There was nothing in the afternoon but themselves.
+
+When she arose, he, looking on the ground all the time,
+saw suddenly sprinkled on the black wet beech-roots many scarlet
+carnation petals, like splashed drops of blood; and red, small
+splashes fell from her bosom, streaming down her dress to her feet.
+
+"Your flowers are smashed," he said.
+
+She looked at him heavily as she put back her hair. 
+Suddenly he put his finger-tips on her cheek.
+
+"Why dost look so heavy?" he reproached her.
+
+She smiled sadly, as if she felt alone in herself.  He caressed
+her cheek with his fingers, and kissed her.
+
+"Nay!" he said.  "Never thee bother!"
+
+She gripped his fingers tight, and laughed shakily. 
+Then she dropped her hand.  He put the hair back from her brows,
+stroking her temples, kissing them lightly.
+
+"But tha shouldna worrit!" he said softly, pleading.
+
+"No, I don't worry!" she laughed tenderly and resigned.
+
+"Yea, tha does!  Dunna thee worrit," he implored, caressing.
+
+"No!" she consoled him, kissing him.
+
+They had a stiff climb to get to the top again.  It took them
+a quarter of an hour.  When he got on to the level grass, he threw
+off his cap, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and sighed.
+
+"Now we're back at the ordinary level," he said.
+
+She sat down, panting, on the tussocky grass.  Her cheeks
+were flushed pink.  He kissed her, and she gave way to joy.
+
+"And now I'll clean thy boots and make thee fit 
+for respectable folk," he said.
+
+He kneeled at her feet, worked away with a stick and tufts
+of grass.  She put her fingers in his hair, drew his head to her,
+and kissed it.
+
+"What am I supposed to be doing," he said, looking at her laughing;
+"cleaning shoes or dibbling with love?  Answer me that!"
+
+"Just whichever I please," she replied.
+
+"I'm your boot-boy for the time being, and nothing else!" 
+But they remained looking into each other's eyes and laughing. 
+Then they kissed with little nibbling kisses.
+
+"T-t-t-t!" he went with his tongue, like his mother. 
+"I tell you, nothing gets done when there's a woman about."
+
+And he returned to his boot-cleaning, singing softly. 
+She touched his thick hair, and he kissed her fingers.  He worked
+away at her shoes.  At last they were quite presentable.
+
+"There you are, you see!" he said.  "Aren't I a great hand at
+restoring you to respectability?  Stand up! 
+There, you look as irreproachable as Britannia herself!"
+
+He cleaned his own boots a little, washed his hands in a puddle,
+and sang.  They went on into Clifton village.  He was madly in love
+with her; every movement she made, every crease in her garments,
+sent a hot flash through him and seemed adorable.
+
+The old lady at whose house they had tea was roused into gaiety
+by them.
+
+"I could wish you'd had something of a better day," she said,
+hovering round.
+
+"Nay!" he laughed.  "We've been saying how nice it is."
+
+The old lady looked at him curiously.  There was a peculiar
+glow and charm about him.  His eyes were dark and laughing. 
+He rubbed his moustache with a glad movement.
+
+"Have you been saying SO!" she exclaimed, a light rousing
+in her old eyes.
+
+"Truly!" he laughed.
+
+"Then I'm sure the day's good enough," said the old lady.
+
+She fussed about, and did not want to leave them.
+
+"I don't know whether you'd like some radishes as well,"
+she said to Clara; "but I've got some in the garden--AND a cucumber."
+
+Clara flushed.  She looked very handsome.
+
+"I should like some radishes," she answered.
+
+And the old lady pottered off gleefully.
+
+"If she knew!" said Clara quietly to him.
+
+"Well, she doesn't know; and it shows we're nice in ourselves,
+at any rate.  You look quite enough to satisfy an archangel, and I'm
+sure I feel harmless--so--if it makes you look nice, and makes folk
+happy when they have us, and makes us happy--why, we're not cheating
+them out of much!"
+
+They went on with the meal.  When they were going away,
+the old lady came timidly with three tiny dahlias in full blow,
+neat as bees, and speckled scarlet and white.  She stood before Clara,
+pleased with herself, saying:
+
+"I don't know whether---" and holding the flowers forward
+in her old hand.
+
+"Oh, how pretty!" cried Clara, accepting the flowers.
+
+"Shall she have them all?" asked Paul reproachfully of the
+old woman.
+
+"Yes, she shall have them all," she replied, beaming with joy. 
+"You have got enough for your share."
+
+"Ah, but I shall ask her to give me one!" he teased.
+
+"Then she does as she pleases," said the old lady, smiling. 
+And she bobbed a little curtsey of delight.
+
+Clara was rather quiet and uncomfortable.  As they walked along,
+he said:
+
+"You don't feel criminal, do you?"
+
+She looked at him with startled grey eyes.
+
+"Criminal!" she said.  "No."
+
+"But you seem to feel you have done a wrong?"
+
+"No," she said.  "I only think, 'If they knew!'"
+
+"If they knew, they'd cease to understand.  As it is, they do
+understand, and they like it.  What do they matter?  Here, with only
+the trees and me, you don't feel not the least bit wrong, do you?"
+
+He took her by the arm, held her facing him, holding her eyes
+with his.  Something fretted him.
+
+"Not sinners, are we?" he said, with an uneasy little frown.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+He kissed her, laughing.
+
+"You like your little bit of guiltiness, I believe," he said. 
+"I believe Eve enjoyed it, when she went cowering out of Paradise."
+
+But there was a certain glow and quietness about her that made
+him glad.  When he was alone in the railway-carriage, he found
+himself tumultuously happy, and the people exceedingly nice,
+and the night lovely, and everything good.
+
+Mrs. Morel was sitting reading when he got home.  Her health
+was not good now, and there had come that ivory pallor into her face
+which he never noticed, and which afterwards he never forgot. 
+She did not mention her own ill-health to him.  After all, she thought,
+it was not much.
+
+"You are late!" she said, looking at him.
+
+His eyes were shining; his face seemed to glow.  He smiled
+to her.
+
+"Yes; I've been down Clifton Grove with Clara."
+
+His mother looked at him again.
+
+"But won't people talk?" she said.
+
+"Why?  They know she's a suffragette, and so on.  And what
+if they do talk!"
+
+"Of course, there may be nothing wrong in it," said his mother. 
+"But you know what folks are, and if once she gets talked about---"
+
+"Well, I can't help it.  Their jaw isn't so almighty important,
+after all."
+
+"I think you ought to consider HER."
+
+"So I DO!  What can people say?--that we take a walk together. 
+I believe you're jealous."
+
+"You know I should be GLAD if she weren't a married woman."
+
+"Well, my dear, she lives separate from her husband, and talks
+on platforms; so she's already singled out from the sheep, and, as far
+as I can see, hasn't much to lose.  No; her life's nothing to her,
+so what's the worth of nothing?  She goes with me--it becomes something. 
+Then she must pay--we both must pay!  Folk are so frightened of paying;
+they'd rather starve and die."
+
+"Very well, my son.  We'll see how it will end."
+
+"Very well, my mother.  I'll abide by the end."
+
+"We'll see!"
+
+"And she's--she's AWFULLY nice, mother; she is really! 
+You don't know!"
+
+"That's not the same as marrying her."
+
+"It's perhaps better."
+
+There was silence for a while.  He wanted
+to ask his mother something, but was afraid.
+
+"Should you like to know her?"  He hesitated.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Morel coolly.  "I should like to know
+what she's like."
+
+"But she's nice, mother, she is!  And not a bit common!" 
+
+"I never suggested she was."
+
+"But you seem to think she's--not as good as---  She's better than
+ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you!  She's BETTER, she is! 
+She's fair, she's honest, she's straight!  There isn't anything
+underhand or superior about her.  Don't be mean about her!"
+
+Mrs. Morel flushed.
+
+"I am sure I am not mean about her.  She may be quite
+as you say, but---"
+
+"You don't approve," he finished.
+
+"And do you expect me to?" she answered coldly.
+
+"Yes!--yes!--if you'd anything about you, you'd be glad! 
+Do you WANT to see her?"
+
+"I said I did."
+
+"Then I'll bring her--shall I bring her here?"
+
+"You please yourself."
+
+"Then I WILL bring her here--one Sunday--to tea.  If you think
+a horrid thing about her, I shan't forgive you."
+
+His mother laughed.
+
+"As if it would make any difference!" she said.  He knew he
+had won.
+
+"Oh, but it feels so fine, when she's there!  She's such
+a queen in her way."
+
+Occasionally he still walked a little way from chapel with Miriam
+and Edgar.  He did not go up to the farm.  She, however, was very much
+the same with him, and he did not feel embarrassed in her presence. 
+One evening she was alone when he accompanied her.  They began
+by talking books:  it was their unfailing topic.  Mrs. Morel had
+said that his and Miriam's affair was like a fire fed on books--if
+there were no more volumes it would die out.  Miriam, for her part,
+boasted that she could read him like a book, could place her finger
+any minute on the chapter and the line.  He, easily taken in,
+believed that Miriam knew more about him than anyone else.  So it
+pleased him to talk to her about himself, like the simplest egoist. 
+Very soon the conversation drifted to his own doings.  It flattered
+him immensely that he was of such supreme interest.
+
+"And what have you been doing lately?"
+
+"I--oh, not much!  I made a sketch of Bestwood from the garden,
+that is nearly right at last.  It's the hundredth try."
+
+So they went on.  Then she said:
+
+"You've not been out, then, lately?"
+
+"Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with Clara."
+
+"It was not very nice weather," said Miriam, "was it?"
+
+"But I wanted to go out, and it was all right.  The Trent
+IS full."
+
+"And did you go to Barton?" she asked.
+
+"No; we had tea in Clifton."
+
+"DID you!  That would be nice."
+
+"It was!  The jolliest old woman!  She gave us several
+pompom dahlias, as pretty as you like."
+
+Miriam bowed her head and brooded.  He was quite unconscious
+of concealing anything from her.
+
+"What made her give them you?" she asked.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Because she liked us--because we were jolly, I should think."
+
+Miriam put her finger in her mouth.
+
+"Were you late home?" she asked.
+
+At last he resented her tone.
+
+"I caught the seven-thirty."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+They walked on in silence, and he was angry.
+
+"And how IS Clara?" asked Miriam.
+
+"Quite all right, I think."
+
+"That's good!" she said, with a tinge of irony.  "By the way,
+what of her husband?  One never hears anything of him."
+
+"He's got some other woman, and is also quite all right,"
+he replied.  "At least, so I think."
+
+"I see--you don't know for certain.  Don't you think a position
+like that is hard on a woman?"
+
+"Rottenly hard!"
+
+"It's so unjust!" said Miriam.  "The man does as he likes---"
+
+"Then let the woman also," he said.
+
+"How can she?  And if she does, look at her position!"
+
+"What of it?"
+
+"Why, it's impossible!  You don't understand what a woman forfeits---"
+
+"No, I don't.  But if a woman's got nothing but her fair fame
+to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!"
+
+So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she knew
+he would act accordingly.
+
+She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know enough.
+
+Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned
+to marriage, then to Clara's marriage with Dawes.
+
+"You see," he said, "she never knew the fearful importance
+of marriage.  She thought it was all in the day's march--it would
+have to come--and Dawes--well, a good many women would have given
+their souls to get him; so why not him?  Then she developed into
+the femme incomprise, and treated him badly, I'll bet my boots."
+
+"And she left him because he didn't understand her?"
+
+"I suppose so.  I suppose she had to.  It isn't altogether
+a question of understanding; it's a question of living.  With him,
+she was only half-alive; the rest was dormant, deadened.  And the
+dormant woman was the femme incomprise, and she HAD to be awakened."
+
+"And what about him."
+
+"I don't know.  I rather think he loves her as much as he can,
+but he's a fool."
+
+"It was something like your mother and father," said Miriam.
+
+"Yes; but my mother, I believe, got real joy and satisfaction
+out of my father at first.  I believe she had a passion for him;
+that's why she stayed with him.  After all, they were bound to
+each other."
+
+"Yes," said Miriam.
+
+"That's what one MUST HAVE, I think," he continued--"the real,
+real flame of feeling through another person--once, only once,
+if it only lasts three months.  See, my mother looks as if she'd
+HAD everything that was necessary for her living and developing. 
+There's not a tiny bit of feeling of sterility about her."
+
+"No," said Miriam.
+
+"And with my father, at first, I'm sure she had the real thing. 
+She knows; she has been there.  You can feet it about her, and about him,
+and about hundreds of people you meet every day; and, once it has
+happened to you, you can go on with anything and ripen."
+
+"What happened, exactly?" asked Miriam.
+
+"It's so hard to say, but the something big and intense that
+changes you when you really come together with somebody else. 
+It almost seems to fertilise your soul and make it that you can go
+on and mature."
+
+"And you think your mother had it with your father?"
+
+"Yes; and at the bottom she feels grateful to him for giving
+it her, even now, though they are miles apart."
+
+"And you think Clara never had it?"
+
+"I'm sure."
+
+Miriam pondered this.  She saw what he was seeking--a sort
+of baptism of fire in passion, it seemed to her.  She realised
+that he would never be satisfied till he had it.  Perhaps it was
+essential to him, as to some men, to sow wild oats; and afterwards,
+when he was satisfied, he would not rage with restlessness any more, 
+but could settle down and give her his life into her hands.  Well, then, 
+if he must go, let him go and have his fill--something big and intense,
+he called it.  At any rate, when he had got it, he would not want
+it--that he said himself; he would want the other thing that she
+could give him.  He would want to be owned, so that he could work. 
+It seemed to her a bitter thing that he must go, but she could let
+him go into an inn for a glass of whisky, so she could let him go
+to Clara, so long as it was something that would satisfy a need in him,
+and leave him free for herself to possess.
+
+"Have you told your mother about Clara?" she asked.
+
+She knew this would be a test of the seriousness of his
+feeling for the other woman:  she knew he was going to Clara for
+something vital, not as a man goes for pleasure to a prostitute,
+if he told his mother.
+
+"Yes," he said, "and she is coming to tea on Sunday."
+
+"To your house?"
+
+"Yes; I want mater to see her."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+There was a silence.  Things had gone quicker than she thought. 
+She felt a sudden bitterness that he could leave her so soon
+and so entirely.  And was Clara to be accepted by his people,
+who had been so hostile to herself?
+
+"I may call in as I go to chapel," she said.  "It is a long
+time since I saw Clara."
+
+"Very well," he said, astonished, and unconsciously angry.
+
+On the Sunday afternoon he went to Keston to meet Clara at
+the station.  As he stood on the platform he was trying to examine
+in himself if he had a premonition.
+
+"Do I FEEL as if she'd come?" he said to himself, and he tried
+to find out.  His heart felt queer and contracted.  That seemed
+like foreboding.  Then he HAD a foreboding she would not come! 
+Then she would not come, and instead of taking her over the
+fields home, as he had imagined, he would have to go alone. 
+The train was late; the afternoon would be wasted, and the evening. 
+He hated her for not coming.  Why had she promised, then, if she
+could not keep her promise?  Perhaps she had missed her train--he
+himself was always missing trains--but that was no reason why
+she should miss this particular one.  He was angry with her;
+he was furious.
+
+Suddenly he saw the train crawling, sneaking round the corner. 
+Here, then, was the train, but of course she had not come.  The green
+engine hissed along the platform, the row of brown carriages drew up,
+several doors opened.  No; she had not come!  No!  Yes; ah, there
+she was!  She had a big black hat on!  He was at her side in a moment.
+
+"I thought you weren't coming," he said.
+
+She was laughing rather breathlessly as she put out her hand
+to him; their eyes met.  He took her quickly along the platform,
+talking at a great rate to hide his feeling.  She looked beautiful. 
+In her hat were large silk roses, coloured like tarnished gold. 
+Her costume of dark cloth fitted so beautifully over her breast
+and shoulders.  His pride went up as he walked with her. 
+He felt the station people, who knew him, eyed her with awe
+and admiration.
+
+"I was sure you weren't coming," he laughed shakily.
+
+She laughed in answer, almost with a little cry.
+
+"And I wondered, when I was in the train, WHATEVER I should
+do if you weren't there!" she said.
+
+He caught her hand impulsively, and they went along
+the narrow twitchel.  They took the road into Nuttall and
+over the Reckoning House Farm.  It was a blue, mild day. 
+Everywhere the brown leaves lay scattered; many scarlet hips
+stood upon the hedge beside the wood.  He gathered a few for her to wear.
+
+"Though, really," he said, as he fitted them into the breast
+of her coat, "you ought to object to my getting them, because of
+the birds.  But they don't care much for rose-hips in this part,
+where they can get plenty of stuff.  You often find the berries
+going rotten in the springtime."
+
+So he chattered, scarcely aware of what he said, only knowing
+he was putting berries in the bosom of her coat, while she stood
+patiently for him.  And she watched his quick hands, so full of life,
+and it seemed to her she had never SEEN anything before.  Till now,
+everything had been indistinct.
+
+They came near to the colliery.  It stood quite still and black
+among the corn-fields, its immense heap of slag seen rising almost
+from the oats.
+
+"What a pity there is a coal-pit here where it is so pretty!"
+said Clara.
+
+"Do you think so?" he answered.  "You see, I am so used to it
+I should miss it.  No; and I like the pits here and there.  I like the
+rows of trucks, and the headstocks, and the steam in the daytime,
+and the lights at night.  When I was a boy, I always thought
+a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night was a pit,
+with its steam, and its lights, and the burning bank,--and I thought
+the Lord was always at the pit-top."
+
+As they drew near home she walked in silence, and seemed
+to hang back.  He pressed her fingers in his own.  She flushed,
+but gave no response.
+
+"Don't you want to come home?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I want to come," she replied.
+
+It did not occur to him that her position in his home would
+be rather a peculiar and difficult one.  To him it seemed just as if
+one of his men friends were going to be introduced to his mother,
+only nicer.
+
+The Morels lived in a house in an ugly street that ran down
+a steep hill.  The street itself was hideous.  The house was rather
+superior to most.  It was old, grimy, with a big bay window, and it
+was semi-detached; but it looked gloomy.  Then Paul opened the door
+to the garden, and all was different.  The sunny afternoon was there,
+like another land.  By the path grew tansy and little trees.  In front
+of the window was a plot of sunny grass, with old lilacs round it. 
+And away went the garden, with heaps of dishevelled chrysanthemums
+in the sunshine, down to the sycamore-tree, and the field,
+and beyond one looked over a few red-roofed cottages to the hills
+with all the glow of the autumn afternoon.
+
+Mrs. Morel sat in her rocking-chair, wearing her black
+silk blouse.  Her grey-brown hair was taken smooth back from her brow
+and her high temples; her face was rather pale.  Clara, suffering,
+followed Paul into the kitchen.  Mrs. Morel rose.  Clara thought
+her a lady, even rather stiff.  The young woman was very nervous. 
+She had almost a wistful look, almost resigned.
+
+"Mother--Clara," said Paul.
+
+Mrs. Morel held out her hand and smiled.
+
+"He has told me a good deal about you," she said.
+
+The blood flamed in Clara's cheek.
+
+"I hope you don't mind my coming," she faltered.
+
+"I was pleased when he said he would bring you," replied Mrs. Morel.
+
+Paul, watching, felt his heart contract with pain.  His mother
+looked so small, and sallow, and done-for beside the luxuriant Clara.
+
+"It's such a pretty day, mother!" he said.  "And we saw a jay."
+
+His mother looked at him; he had turned to her.  She thought
+what a man he seemed, in his dark, well-made clothes.  He was pale
+and detached-looking; it would be hard for any woman to keep him. 
+Her heart glowed; then she was sorry for Clara.
+
+"Perhaps you'll leave your things in the parlour,"
+said Mrs. Morel nicely to the young woman.
+
+"Oh, thank you," she replied.
+
+"Come on," said Paul, and he led the way into the little
+front room, with its old piano, its mahogany furniture, its yellowing
+marble mantelpiece.  A fire was burning; the place was littered
+with books and drawing-boards.  "I leave my things lying about,"
+he said.  "It's so much easier."
+
+She loved his artist's paraphernalia, and the books, and the
+photos of people.  Soon he was telling her:  this was William,
+this was William's young lady in the evening dress, this was Annie
+and her husband, this was Arthur and his wife and the baby. 
+She felt as if she were being taken into the family.  He showed
+her photos, books, sketches, and they talked a little while. 
+Then they returned to the kitchen.  Mrs. Morel put aside her book. 
+Clara wore a blouse of fine silk chiffon, with narrow black-and-white
+stripes; her hair was done simply, coiled on top of her head. 
+She looked rather stately and reserved.
+
+"You have gone to live down Sneinton Boulevard?" said Mrs. Morel. 
+"When I was a girl--girl, I say!--when I was a young woman WE lived
+in Minerva Terrace."
+
+"Oh, did you!" said Clara.  "I have a friend in number 6."
+
+And the conversation had started.  They talked Nottingham
+and Nottingham people; it interested them both.  Clara was still
+rather nervous; Mrs. Morel was still somewhat on her dignity. 
+She clipped her language very clear and precise.  But they were going
+to get on well together, Paul saw.
+
+Mrs. Morel measured herself against the younger woman,
+and found herself easily stronger.  Clara was deferential. 
+She knew Paul's surprising regard for his mother, and she had
+dreaded the meeting, expecting someone rather hard and cold. 
+She was surprised to find this little interested woman chatting with 
+such readiness; and then she felt, as she felt with Paul, that she would not
+care to stand in Mrs. Morel's way.  There was something so hard
+and certain in his mother, as if she never had a misgiving in her life.
+
+Presently Morel came down, ruffled and yawning, from his
+afternoon sleep.  He scratched his grizzled head, he plodded
+in his stocking feet, his waistcoat hung open over his shirt. 
+He seemed incongruous.
+
+"This is Mrs. Dawes, father," said Paul.
+
+Then Morel pulled himself together.  Clara saw Paul's manner
+of bowing and shaking hands.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" exclaimed Morel.  "I am very glad to see you--I am,
+I assure you.  But don't disturb yourself.  No, no make yourself
+quite comfortable, and be very welcome."
+
+Clara was astonished at this flood of hospitality from
+the old collier.  He was so courteous, so gallant!  She thought
+him most delightful.
+
+"And may you have come far?" he asked.
+
+"Only from Nottingham," she said.
+
+"From Nottingham!  Then you have had a beautiful day
+for your journey."
+
+Then he strayed into the scullery to wash his hands and face,
+and from force of habit came on to the hearth with the towel to
+dry himself.
+
+At tea Clara felt the refinement and sang-froid of the household. 
+Mrs. Morel was perfectly at her ease.  The pouring out the tea and
+attending to the people went on unconsciously, without interrupting
+her in her talk.  There was a lot of room at the oval table; the china
+of dark blue willow-pattern looked pretty on the glossy cloth. 
+There was a little bowl of small, yellow chrysanthemums. 
+Clara felt she completed the circle, and it was a pleasure to her. 
+But she was rather afraid of the self-possession of the Morels,
+father and all.  She took their tone; there was a feeling of balance. 
+It was a cool, clear atmosphere, where everyone was himself,
+and in harmony.  Clara enjoyed it, but there was a fear deep at the
+bottom of her.
+
+Paul cleared the table whilst his mother and Clara talked. 
+Clara was conscious of his quick, vigorous body as it came and went,
+seeming blown quickly by a wind at its work.  It was almost like
+the hither and thither of a leaf that comes unexpected.  Most of herself
+went with him.  By the way she leaned forward, as if listening,
+Mrs. Morel could see she was possessed elsewhere as she talked,
+and again the elder woman was sorry for her.
+
+Having finished, he strolled down the garden, leaving the two
+women to talk.  It was a hazy, sunny afternoon, mild and soft. 
+Clara glanced through the window after him as he loitered among
+the chrysanthemums.  She felt as if something almost tangible fastened
+her to him; yet he seemed so easy in his graceful, indolent movement,
+so detached as he tied up the too-heavy flower branches to their stakes,
+that she wanted to shriek in her helplessness.
+
+Mrs. Morel rose.
+
+"You will let me help you wash up," said Clara.
+
+"Eh, there are so few, it will only take a minute," said the other.
+
+Clara, however, dried the tea-things, and was glad to be on
+such good terms with his mother; but it was torture not to be able
+to follow him down the garden.  At last she allowed herself to go;
+she felt as if a rope were taken off her ankle.
+
+The afternoon was golden over the hills of Derbyshire.  He stood
+across in the other garden, beside a bush of pale Michaelmas daisies,
+watching the last bees crawl into the hive.  Hearing her coming,
+he turned to her with an easy motion, saying:
+
+"It's the end of the run with these chaps."
+
+Clara stood near him.  Over the low red wall in front was
+the country and the far-off hills, all golden dim.
+
+At that moment Miriam was entering through the garden-door.
+She saw Clara go up to him, saw him turn, and saw them come to
+rest together.  Something in their perfect isolation together made
+her know that it was accomplished between them, that they were,
+as she put it, married.  She walked very slowly down the cinder-track
+of the long garden.
+
+Clara had pulled a button from a hollyhock spire, and was breaking
+it to get the seeds.  Above her bowed head the pink flowers stared,
+as if defending her.  The last bees were falling down to the hive.
+
+"Count your money," laughed Paul, as she broke the flat seeds
+one by one from the roll of coin.  She looked at him.
+
+"I'm well off," she said, smiling.
+
+"How much?  Pf!"  He snapped his fingers.  "Can I turn them
+into gold?"
+
+"I'm afraid not," she laughed.
+
+They looked into each other's eyes, laughing.  At that moment
+they became aware of Miriam.  There was a click, and everything
+had altered.
+
+"Hello, Miriam!" he exclaimed.  "You said you'd come!"
+
+"Yes.  Had you forgotten?"
+
+She shook hands with Clara, saying:
+
+"It seems strange to see you here."
+
+"Yes," replied the other; "it seems strange to be here."
+
+There was a hesitation.
+
+"This is pretty, isn't it?" said Miriam.
+
+"I like it very much," replied Clara.
+
+Then Miriam realised that Clara was accepted as she had never been.
+
+"Have you come down alone?" asked Paul.
+
+"Yes; I went to Agatha's to tea.  We are going to chapel. 
+I only called in for a moment to see Clara."
+
+"You should have come in here to tea," he said.
+
+Miriam laughed shortly, and Clara turned impatiently aside.
+
+"Do you like the chrysanthemums?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; they are very fine," replied Miriam.
+
+"Which sort do you like best?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know.  The bronze, I think."
+
+"I don't think you've seen all the sorts.  Come and look. 
+Come and see which are YOUR favourites, Clara."
+
+He led the two women back to his own garden, where the towsled
+bushes of flowers of all colours stood raggedly along the path down
+to the field.  The situation did not embarrass him, to his knowledge.
+
+"Look, Miriam; these are the white ones that came from your garden. 
+They aren't so fine here, are they?"
+
+"No," said Miriam.
+
+"But they're hardier.  You're so sheltered; things grow big
+and tender, and then die.  These little yellow ones I like. 
+Will you have some?"
+
+While they were out there the bells began to ring in the church,
+sounding loud across the town and the field.  Miriam looked at the
+tower, proud among the clustering roofs, and remembered the sketches
+he had brought her.  It had been different then, but he had not left
+her even yet.  She asked him for a book to read.  He ran indoors.
+
+"What! is that Miriam?" asked his mother coldly.
+
+"Yes; she said she'd call and see Clara."
+
+"You told her, then?" came the sarcastic answer.
+
+"Yes; why shouldn't I?"
+
+"There's certainly no reason why you shouldn't," said Mrs. Morel,
+and she returned to her book.  He winced from his mother's irony,
+frowned irritably, thinking:  "Why can't I do as I like?"
+
+"You've not seen Mrs. Morel before?"  Miriam was saying to Clara.
+
+"No; but she's so nice!"
+
+"Yes," said Miriam, dropping her head; "in some ways she's
+very fine."
+
+"I should think so."
+
+"Had Paul told you much about her?"
+
+"He had talked a good deal."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+There was silence until he returned with the book.
+
+"When will you want it back?"  Miriam asked.
+
+"When you like," he answered.
+
+Clara turned to go indoors, whilst he accompanied Miriam
+to the gate.
+
+"When will you come up to Willey Farm?" the latter asked.
+
+"I couldn't say," replied Clara.
+
+"Mother asked me to say she'd be pleased to see you any time,
+if you cared to come."
+
+"Thank you; I should like to, but I can't say when."
+
+"Oh, very well!" exclaimed Miriam rather bitterly, turning away.
+
+She went down the path with her mouth to the flowers he had
+given her.
+
+"You're sure you won't come in?" he said.
+
+"No, thanks."
+
+"We are going to chapel."
+
+"Ah, I shall see you, then!"  Miriam was very bitter.
+
+"Yes."
+
+They parted.  He felt guilty towards her.  She was bitter,
+and she scorned him.  He still belonged to herself, she believed; 
+yet he could have Clara, take her home, sit with her next his mother
+in chapel, give her the same hymn-book he had given herself
+years before.  She heard him running quickly indoors.
+
+But he did not go straight in.  Halting on the plot of grass,
+he heard his mother's voice, then Clara's answer:
+
+"What I hate is the bloodhound quality in Miriam."
+
+"Yes," said his mother quickly, "yes; DOESN'T it make you
+hate her, now!"
+
+His heart went hot, and he was angry with them for talking
+about the girl.  What right had they to say that?  Something in
+the speech itself stung him into a flame of hate against Miriam. 
+Then his own heart rebelled furiously at Clara's taking the liberty
+of speaking so about Miriam.  After all, the girl was the better woman
+of the two, he thought, if it came to goodness.  He went indoors. 
+His mother looked excited.  She was beating with her hand
+rhythmically on the sofa-arm, as women do who are wearing out. 
+He could never bear to see the movement.  There was a silence;
+then he began to talk.
+
+In chapel Miriam saw him find the place in the hymn-book
+for Clara, in exactly the same way as he used for herself. 
+And during the sermon he could see the girl across the chapel,
+her hat throwing a dark shadow over her face.  What did she think,
+seeing Clara with him?  He did not stop to consider.  He felt himself
+cruel towards Miriam.
+
+After chapel he went over Pentrich with Clara.  It was a dark
+autumn night.  They had said good-bye to Miriam, and his heart had
+smitten him as he left the girl alone.  "But it serves her right,"
+he said inside himself, and it almost gave him pleasure to go off
+under her eyes with this other handsome woman.
+
+There was a scent of damp leaves in the darkness.  Clara's hand
+lay warm and inert in his own as they walked.  He was full of conflict. 
+The battle that raged inside him made him feel desperate.
+
+Up Pentrich Hill Clara leaned against him as he went. 
+He slid his arm round her waist.  Feeling the strong motion
+of her body under his arm as she walked, the tightness in his
+chest because of Miriam relaxed, and the hot blood bathed him. 
+He held her closer and closer.
+
+Then:  "You still keep on with Miriam," she said quietly.
+
+"Only talk.  There never WAS a great deal more than talk
+between us," he said bitterly.
+
+"Your mother doesn't care for her," said Clara.
+
+"No, or I might have married her.  But it's all up really!"
+
+Suddenly his voice went passionate with hate.
+
+"If I was with her now, we should be jawing about the 'Christian
+Mystery', or some such tack.  Thank God, I'm not!"
+
+They walked on in silence for some time.
+
+"But you can't really give her up," said Clara.
+
+"I don't give her up, because there's nothing to give,"
+he said.
+
+"There is for her."
+
+"I don't know why she and I shouldn't be friends as long
+as we live," he said.  "But it'll only be friends."
+
+Clara drew away from him, leaning away from contact with him.
+
+"What are you drawing away for?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer, but drew farther from him.
+
+"Why do you want to walk alone?" he asked.
+
+Still there was no answer.  She walked resentfully, hanging her head.
+
+"Because I said I would be friends with Miriam!" he exclaimed.
+
+She would not answer him anything.
+
+"I tell you it's only words that go between us," he persisted,
+trying to take her again.
+
+She resisted.  Suddenly he strode across in front of her,
+barring her way.
+
+"Damn it!" he said.  "What do you want now?"
+
+"You'd better run after Miriam," mocked Clara.
+
+The blood flamed up in him.  He stood showing his teeth. 
+She drooped sulkily.  The lane was dark, quite lonely.  He suddenly
+caught her in his arms, stretched forward, and put his mouth on
+her face in a kiss of rage.  She turned frantically to avoid him. 
+He held her fast.  Hard and relentless his mouth came for her. 
+Her breasts hurt against the wall of his chest.  Helpless, she went
+loose in his arms, and he kissed her, and kissed her.
+
+He heard people coming down the hill.
+
+"Stand up! stand up!" he said thickly, gripping her arm till
+it hurt.  If he had let go, she would have sunk to the ground.
+
+She sighed and walked dizzily beside him.  They went on in silence.
+
+"We will go over the fields," he said; and then she woke up.
+
+But she let herself be helped over the stile, and she
+walked in silence with him over the first dark field.  It was
+the way to Nottingham and to the station, she knew.  He seemed
+to be looking about.  They came out on a bare hilltop where stood
+the dark figure of the ruined windmill.  There he halted. 
+They stood together high up in the darkness, looking at the lights
+scattered on the night before them, handfuls of glittering points,
+villages lying high and low on the dark, here and there.
+
+"Like treading among the stars," he said, with a quaky laugh.
+
+Then he took her in his arms, and held her fast.  She moved
+aside her mouth to ask, dogged and low:
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," he pleaded thickly.
+
+"Yes it does--yes!  I must go!"
+
+"It's early yet," he said.
+
+"What time is it?" she insisted.
+
+All round lay the black night, speckled and spangled with lights.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+She put her hand on his chest, feeling for his watch. 
+He felt the joints fuse into fire.  She groped in his waistcoat pocket,
+while he stood panting.  In the darkness she could see the round,
+pale face of the watch, but not the figures.  She stooped over it. 
+He was panting till he could take her in his arms again.
+
+"I can't see," she said.
+
+"Then don't bother."
+
+"Yes; I'm going!" she said, turning away.
+
+"Wait!  I'll look!"  But he could not see.  "I'll strike
+a match."
+
+He secretly hoped it was too late to catch the train. 
+She saw the glowing lantern of his hands as he cradled the light: 
+then his face lit up, his eyes fixed on the watch.  Instantly all was
+dark again.  All was black before her eyes; only a glowing match was
+red near her feet.  Where was he?
+
+"What is it?" she asked, afraid.
+
+"You can't do it," his voice answered out of the darkness.
+
+There was a pause.  She felt in his power.  She had heard
+the ring in his voice.  It frightened her.
+
+"What time is it?" she asked, quiet, definite, hopeless.
+
+"Two minutes to nine," he replied, telling the truth with
+a struggle.
+
+"And can I get from here to the station in fourteen minutes?"
+
+"No.  At any rate---"
+
+She could distinguish his dark form again a yard or so away. 
+She wanted to escape.
+
+"But can't I do it?" she pleaded.
+
+"If you hurry," he said brusquely.  "But you could easily
+walk it, Clara; it's only seven miles to the tram.  I'll come
+with you."
+
+"No; I want to catch the train."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I do--I want to catch the train."
+
+Suddenly his voice altered.
+
+"Very well," he said, dry and hard.  "Come along, then."
+
+And he plunged ahead into the darkness.  She ran after him,
+wanting to cry.  Now he was hard and cruel to her.  She ran over
+the rough, dark fields behind him, out of breath, ready to drop. 
+But the double row of lights at the station drew nearer.  Suddenly:
+
+"There she is!" he cried, breaking into a run.
+
+There was a faint rattling noise.  Away to the right the train,
+like a luminous caterpillar, was threading across the night. 
+The rattling ceased.
+
+"She's over the viaduct.  You'll just do it."
+
+Clara ran, quite out of breath, and fell at last into the train. 
+The whistle blew.  He was gone.  Gone!--and she was in a carriage
+full of people.  She felt the cruelty of it.
+
+He turned round and plunged home.  Before he knew where
+he was he was in the kitchen at home.  He was very pale. 
+His eyes were dark and dangerous-looking, as if he were drunk. 
+His mother looked at him.
+
+"Well, I must say your boots are in a nice state!" she said.
+
+He looked at his feet.  Then he took off his overcoat. 
+His mother wondered if he were drunk.
+
+"She caught the train then?" she said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I hope HER feet weren't so filthy.  Where on earth you dragged
+her I don't know!"
+
+He was silent and motionless for some time.
+
+"Did you like her?" he asked grudgingly at last.
+
+"Yes, I liked her.  But you'll tire of her, my son; you know
+you will."
+
+He did not answer.  She noticed how he laboured in his breathing.
+
+"Have you been running?" she asked.
+
+"We had to run for the train."
+
+"You'll go and knock yourself up.  You'd better drink hot milk."
+
+It was as good a stimulant as he could have, but he refused
+and went to bed.  There he lay face down on the counterpane,
+and shed tears of rage and pain.  There was a physical pain
+that made him bite his lips till they bled, and the chaos inside
+him left him unable to think, almost to feel.
+
+"This is how she serves me, is it?" he said in his heart,
+over and over, pressing his face in the quilt.  And he hated her. 
+Again he went over the scene, and again he hated her.
+
+The next day there was a new aloofness about him.  Clara was
+very gentle, almost loving.  But he treated her distantly,
+with a touch of contempt.  She sighed, continuing to be gentle. 
+He came round.
+
+One evening of that week Sarah Bernhardt was at the Theatre Royal
+in Nottingham, giving "La Dame aux Camelias".  Paul wanted to see
+this old and famous actress, and he asked Clara to accompany him. 
+He told his mother to leave the key in the window for him.
+
+"Shall I book seats?" he asked of Clara.
+
+"Yes.  And put on an evening suit, will you?  I've never seen
+you in it."
+
+"But, good Lord, Clara!  Think of ME in evening suit
+at the theatre!" he remonstrated.
+
+"Would you rather not?" she asked.
+
+"I will if you WANT me to; but I s'll feel a fool."
+
+She laughed at him.
+
+"Then feel a fool for my sake, once, won't you?"
+
+The request made his blood flush up.
+
+"I suppose I s'll have to."
+
+"What are you taking a suitcase for?" his mother asked.
+
+He blushed furiously.
+
+"Clara asked me," he said.
+
+"And what seats are you going in?"
+
+"Circle--three-and-six each!"
+
+"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed his mother sarcastically.
+
+"It's only once in the bluest of blue moons," he said.
+
+He dressed at Jordan's, put on an overcoat and a cap, and met
+Clara in a cafe.  She was with one of her suffragette friends. 
+She wore an old long coat, which did not suit her, and had a little wrap
+over her head, which he hated.  The three went to the theatre together.
+
+Clara took off her coat on the stairs, and he discovered she
+was in a sort of semi-evening dress, that left her arms and neck
+and part of her breast bare.  Her hair was done fashionably. 
+The dress, a simple thing of green crape, suited her.  She looked
+quite grand, he thought.  He could see her figure inside the frock,
+as if that were wrapped closely round her.  The firmness and the
+softness of her upright body could almost be felt as he looked at her. 
+He clenched his fists.
+
+And he was to sit all the evening beside her beautiful naked arm,
+watching the strong throat rise from the strong chest, watching the
+breasts under the green stuff, the curve of her limbs in the tight dress. 
+Something in him hated her again for submitting him to this torture
+of nearness.  And he loved her as she balanced her head and stared
+straight in front of her, pouting, wistful, immobile, as if she
+yielded herself to her fate because it was too strong for her. 
+She could not help herself; she was in the grip of something
+bigger than herself.  A kind of eternal look about her, as if she
+were a wistful sphinx, made it necessary for him to kiss her. 
+He dropped his programme, and crouched down on the floor to get it,
+so that he could kiss her hand and wrist.  Her beauty was a torture
+to him.  She sat immobile.  Only, when the lights went down,
+she sank a little against him, and he caressed her hand and arm
+with his fingers.  He could smell her faint perfume.  All the time
+his blood kept sweeping up in great white-hot waves that killed his
+consciousness momentarily.
+
+The drama continued.  He saw it all in the distance, going on
+somewhere; he did not know where, but it seemed far away inside him. 
+He was Clara's white heavy arms, her throat, her moving bosom. 
+That seemed to be himself.  Then away somewhere the play went on,
+and he was identified with that also.  There was no himself. 
+The grey and black eyes of Clara, her bosom coming
+down on him, her arm that he held gripped between his hands,
+were all that existed.  Then he felt himself small and helpless,
+her towering in her force above him.
+
+Only the intervals, when the lights came up, hurt him expressibly. 
+He wanted to run anywhere, so long as it would be dark again. 
+In a maze, he wandered out for a drink.  Then the lights were out,
+and the strange, insane reality of Clara and the drama took hold of
+him again.
+
+The play went on.  But he was obsessed by the desire to
+kiss the tiny blue vein that nestled in the bend of her arm. 
+He could feel it.  His whole face seemed suspended till he had
+put his lips there.  It must be done.  And the other people! 
+At last he bent quickly forward and touched it with his lips. 
+His moustache brushed the sensitive flesh.  Clara shivered, drew away
+her arm.
+
+When all was over, the lights up, the people clapping,
+he came to himself and looked at his watch.  His train was gone.
+
+"I s'll have to walk home!" he said.
+
+Clara looked at him.
+
+"It is too late?" she asked.
+
+He nodded.  Then he helped her on with her coat.
+
+"I love you!  You look beautiful in that dress," he murmured
+over her shoulder, among the throng of bustling people.
+
+She remained quiet.  Together they went out of the theatre. 
+He saw the cabs waiting, the people passing.  It seemed he met
+a pair of brown eyes which hated him.  But he did not know. 
+He and Clara turned away, mechanically taking the direction to
+the station.
+
+The train had gone.  He would have to walk the ten miles home.
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said.  "I shall enjoy it."
+
+"Won't you," she said, flushing, "come home for the night? 
+I can sleep with mother."
+
+He looked at her.  Their eyes met.
+
+"What will your mother say?" he asked.
+
+"She won't mind."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"Quite! "
+
+"SHALL I come?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"Very well."
+
+And they turned away.  At the first stopping-place they took
+the car.  The wind blew fresh in their faces.  The town was dark;
+the tram tipped in its haste.  He sat with her hand fast in his.
+
+"Will your mother be gone to bed?" he asked.
+
+"She may be.  I hope not."
+
+They hurried along the silent, dark little street, the only
+people out of doors.  Clara quickly entered the house.  He hesitated.
+
+He leaped up the step and was in the room.  Her mother appeared
+in the inner doorway, large and hostile.
+
+"Who have you got there?" she asked.
+
+"It's Mr. Morel; he has missed his train.  I thought we might
+put him up for the night, and save him a ten-mile walk."
+
+"H'm," exclaimed Mrs. Radford.  "That's your lookout! 
+If you've invited him, he's very welcome as far as I'm concerned. 
+YOU keep the house!"
+
+"If you don't like me, I'll go away again," he said.
+
+"Nay, nay, you needn't!  Come along in!  I dunno what you'll
+think of the supper I'd got her."
+
+It was a little dish of chip potatoes and a piece of bacon. 
+The table was roughly laid for one.
+
+"You can have some more bacon," continued Mrs. Radford. 
+"More chips you can't have."
+
+"It's a shame to bother you," he said.
+
+"Oh, don't you be apologetic!  It doesn't DO wi' me!  You treated her
+to the theatre, didn't you?"  There was a sarcasm in the last question.
+
+"Well?" laughed Paul uncomfortably.
+
+"Well, and what's an inch of bacon!  Take your coat off."
+
+The big, straight-standing woman was trying to estimate
+the situation.  She moved about the cupboard.  Clara took his coat. 
+The room was very warm and cosy in the lamplight.
+
+"My sirs!" exclaimed Mrs. Radford; "but you two's a pair
+of bright beauties, I must say!  What's all that get-up for?"
+
+"I believe we don't know," he said, feeling a victim.
+
+"There isn't room in THIS house for two such bobby-dazzlers, if
+you fly your kites THAT high!" she rallied them.  It was a nasty thrust.
+
+He in his dinner jacket, and Clara in her green dress
+and bare arms, were confused.  They felt they must shelter
+each other in that little kitchen.
+
+"And look at THAT blossom! " continued Mrs. Radford,
+pointing to Clara.  "What does she reckon she did it for?"
+
+Paul looked at Clara.  She was rosy; her neck was warm
+with blushes.  There was a moment of silence.
+
+"You like to see it, don't you?" he asked.
+
+The mother had them in her power.  All the time his heart
+was beating hard, and he was tight with anxiety.  But he would
+fight her.
+
+"Me like to see it!" exclaimed the old woman.  "What should I
+like to see her make a fool of herself for?"
+
+"I've seen people look bigger fools," he said.  Clara was
+under his protection now.
+
+"Oh, ay! and when was that?" came the sarcastic rejoinder.
+
+"When they made frights of themselves," he answered.
+
+Mrs. Radford, large and threatening, stood suspended
+on the hearthrug, holding her fork.
+
+"They're fools either road," she answered at length,
+turning to the Dutch oven.
+
+"No," he said, fighting stoutly.  "Folk ought to look as well
+as they can."
+
+"And do you call THAT looking nice!" cried the mother,
+pointing a scornful fork at Clara.  "That--that looks as if it
+wasn't properly dressed!"
+
+"I believe you're jealous that you can't swank as well,"
+he said laughing.
+
+"Me!  I could have worn evening dress with anybody, if I'd
+wanted to!" came the scornful answer.
+
+"And why didn't you want to?" he asked pertinently.  "Or DID
+you wear it?"
+
+There was a long pause.  Mrs. Radford readjusted the bacon
+in the Dutch oven.  His heart beat fast, for fear he had offended her.
+
+"Me!" she exclaimed at last.  "No, I didn't!  And when I was
+in service, I knew as soon as one of the maids came out in bare
+shoulders what sort SHE was, going to her sixpenny hop!"
+
+"Were you too good to go to a sixpenny hop?" he said.
+
+Clara sat with bowed head.  His eyes were dark and glittering. 
+Mrs. Radford took the Dutch oven from the fire, and stood near him,
+putting bits of bacon on his plate.
+
+"THERE'S a nice crozzly bit!" she said.
+
+"Don't give me the best!" he said.
+
+"SHE'S got what SHE wants," was the answer.
+
+There was a sort of scornful forbearance in the woman's tone
+that made Paul know she was mollified.
+
+"But DO have some!" he said to Clara.
+
+She looked up at him with her grey eyes, humiliated and lonely.
+
+"No thanks!" she said.
+
+"Why won't you?" he answered carelessly.
+
+The blood was beating up like fire in his veins.  Mrs. Radford
+sat down again, large and impressive and aloof.  He left Clara
+altogether to attend to the mother.
+
+"They say Sarah Bernhardt's fifty," he said.
+
+"Fifty!  She's turned sixty!" came the scornful answer.
+
+"Well," he said, "you'd never think it!  She made me want
+to howl even now."
+
+"I should like to see myself howling at THAT bad old baggage!"
+said Mrs. Radford.  "It's time she began to think herself a grandmother,
+not a shrieking catamaran---"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"A catamaran is a boat the Malays use," he said.
+
+"And it's a word as I use," she retorted.
+
+"My mother does sometimes, and it's no good my telling her,"
+he said.
+
+"I s'd think she boxes your ears," said Mrs. Radford,
+good-humouredly.
+
+"She'd like to, and she says she will, so I give her a little
+stool to stand on."
+
+"That's the worst of my mother," said Clara.  "She never wants
+a stool for anything."
+
+"But she often can't touch THAT lady with a long prop,"
+retorted Mrs. Radford to Paul.
+
+"I s'd think she doesn't want touching with a prop," he laughed. 
+"I shouldn't."
+
+"It might do the pair of you good to give you a crack
+on the head with one," said the mother, laughing suddenly.
+
+"Why are you so vindictive towards me?" he said.  "I've not
+stolen anything from you."
+
+"No; I'll watch that," laughed the older woman.
+
+Soon the supper was finished.  Mrs. Radford sat guard in her
+chair.  Paul lit a cigarette.  Clara went upstairs, returning with 
+a sleeping-suit, which she spread on the fender to air.
+
+"Why, I'd forgot all about THEM!" said Mrs. Radford. 
+"Where have they sprung from?"
+
+"Out of my drawer."
+
+"H'm!  You bought 'em for Baxter, an' he wouldn't wear 'em,
+would he?"--laughing.  "Said he reckoned to do wi'out trousers i'
+bed."  She turned confidentially to Paul, saying:  "He couldn't
+BEAR 'em, them pyjama things."
+
+The young man sat making rings of smoke.
+
+"Well, it's everyone to his taste," he laughed.
+
+Then followed a little discussion of the merits of pyjamas.
+
+"My mother loves me in them," he said.  "She says I'm a pierrot."
+
+"I can imagine they'd suit you," said Mrs. Radford.
+
+After a while he glanced at the little clock that was ticking
+on the mantelpiece.  It was half-past twelve.
+
+"It is funny," he said, "but it takes hours to settle down
+to sleep after the theatre."
+
+"It's about time you did," said Mrs. Radford, clearing the table.
+
+"Are YOU tired?" he asked of Clara.
+
+"Not the least bit," she answered, avoiding his eyes.
+
+"Shall we have a game at cribbage?" he said.
+
+"I've forgotten it."
+
+"Well, I'll teach you again.  May we play crib, Mrs. Radford?"
+he asked.
+
+"You'll please yourselves," she said; "but it's pretty late."
+
+"A game or so will make us sleepy," he answered.
+
+Clara brought the cards, and sat spinning her wedding-ring whilst
+he shuffled them.  Mrs. Radford was washing up in the scullery. 
+As it grew later Paul felt the situation getting more and more tense.
+
+"Fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six, and two's eight---!"
+
+The clock struck one.  Still the game continued.  Mrs. Radford
+had done all the little jobs preparatory to going to bed,
+had locked the door and filled the kettle.  Still Paul went on
+dealing and counting.  He was obsessed by Clara's arms and throat. 
+He believed he could see where the division was just beginning
+for her breasts.  He could not leave her.  She watched his hands,
+and felt her joints melt as they moved quickly.  She was so near;
+it was almost as if he touched her, and yet not quite.  His mettle was 
+roused.  He hated Mrs. Radford.  She sat on, nearly dropping asleep, 
+but determined and obstinate in her chair.  Paul glanced at her, then at 
+Clara.  She met his eyes, that were angry, mocking, and hard as steel.  
+Her own answered him in shame.  He knew SHE, at any rate, was 
+of his mind.  He played on.
+
+At last Mrs. Radford roused herself stiffly, and said:
+
+"Isn't it nigh on time you two was thinking o' bed?"
+
+Paul played on without answering.  He hated her sufficiently
+to murder her.
+
+"Half a minute," he said.
+
+The elder woman rose and sailed stubbornly into the scullery,
+returning with his candle, which she put on the mantelpiece. 
+Then she sat down again.  The hatred of her went so hot 
+down his veins, he dropped his cards.
+
+"We'll stop, then," he said, but his voice was still a challenge.
+
+Clara saw his mouth shut hard.  Again he glanced at her. 
+It seemed like an agreement.  She bent over the cards, coughing,
+to clear her throat.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you've finished," said Mrs. Radford. 
+"Here, take your things"--she thrust the warm suit in his hand--"and
+this is your candle.  Your room's over this; there's only two,
+so you can't go far wrong.  Well, good-night.  I hope you'll rest well."
+
+"I'm sure I shall; I always do," he said.
+
+"Yes; and so you ought at your age," she replied.
+
+He bade good-night to Clara, and went.  The twisting stairs
+of white, scrubbed wood creaked and clanged at every step. 
+He went doggedly.  The two doors faced each other.  He went in his room,
+pushed the door to, without fastening the latch.
+
+It was a small room with a large bed.  Some of Clara's
+hair-pins were on the dressing-table--her hair-brush.  Her clothes
+and some skirts hung under a cloth in a corner.  There was actually
+a pair of stockings over a chair.  He explored the room. 
+Two books of his own were there on the shelf.  He undressed,
+folded his suit, and sat on the bed, listening.  Then he blew
+out the candle, lay down, and in two minutes was almost asleep. 
+Then click!--he was wide awake and writhing in torment.  It was as if,
+when he had nearly got to sleep, something had bitten him suddenly
+and sent him mad.  He sat up and looked at the room in the darkness,
+his feet doubled under him, perfectly motionless, listening.  He heard 
+a cat somewhere away outside; then the heavy, poised tread 
+of the mother; then Clara's distinct voice:
+
+"Will you unfasten my dress?"
+
+There was silence for some time.  At last the mother said:
+
+"Now then! aren't you coming up?"
+
+"No, not yet," replied the daughter calmly.
+
+"Oh, very well then!  If it's not late enough, stop a bit longer. 
+Only you needn't come waking me up when I've got to sleep."
+
+"I shan't be long," said Clara.
+
+Immediately afterwards Paul heard the mother slowly mounting
+the stairs.  The candlelight flashed through the cracks in his door. 
+Her dress brushed the door, and his heart jumped.  Then it was dark,
+and he heard the clatter of her latch.  She was very leisurely indeed
+in her preparations for sleep.  After a long time it was quite still. 
+He sat strung up on the bed, shivering slightly.  His door was
+an inch open.  As Clara came upstairs, he would intercept her. 
+He waited.  All was dead silence.  The clock struck two.  Then he
+heard a slight scrape of the fender downstairs.  Now he could not
+help himself.  His shivering was uncontrollable.  He felt he must go
+or die.
+
+He stepped off the bed, and stood a moment, shuddering. 
+Then he went straight to the door.  He tried to step lightly. 
+The first stair cracked like a shot.  He listened.  The old woman
+stirred in her bed.  The staircase was dark.  There was a slit
+of light under the stair-foot door, which opened into the kitchen. 
+He stood a moment.  Then he went on, mechanically.  Every step creaked,
+and his back was creeping, lest the old woman's door should open
+behind him up above.  He fumbled with the door at the bottom. 
+The latch opened with a loud clack.  He went through into the kitchen,
+and shut the door noisily behind him.  The old woman daren't
+come now.
+
+Then he stood, arrested.  Clara was kneeling on a pile of white
+underclothing on the hearthrug, her back towards him, warming herself. 
+She did not look round, but sat crouching on her heels, and her
+rounded beautiful back was towards him, and her face was hidden. 
+She was warming her body at the fire for consolation.  The glow
+was rosy on one side, the shadow was dark and warm on the other. 
+Her arms hung slack.
+
+He shuddered violently, clenching his teeth and fists hard
+to keep control.  Then he went forward to her.  He put one hand
+on her shoulder, the fingers of the other hand under her chin to
+raise her face.  A convulsed shiver ran through her, once, twice,
+at his touch.  She kept her head bent.
+
+"Sorry!" he murmured, realising that his hands were very cold.
+
+Then she looked up at him, frightened, like a thing that is
+afraid of death.
+
+"My hands are so cold," he murmured.
+
+"I like it," she whispered, closing her eyes.
+
+The breath of her words were on his mouth.  Her arms clasped
+his knees.  The cord of his sleeping-suit dangled against her and made
+her shiver.  As the warmth went into him, his shuddering became less.
+
+At length, unable to stand so any more, he raised her, and she
+buried her head on his shoulder.  His hands went over her slowly
+with an infinite tenderness of caress.  She clung close to him,
+trying to hide herself against him.  He clasped her very fast. 
+Then at last she looked at him, mute, imploring, looking to see if she
+must be ashamed.
+
+His eyes were dark, very deep, and very quiet.  It was as if her
+beauty and his taking it hurt him, made him sorrowful.  He looked at
+her with a little pain, and was afraid.  He was so humble before her. 
+She kissed him fervently on the eyes, first one, then the other,
+and she folded herself to him.  She gave herself.  He held her fast. 
+It was a moment intense almost to agony.
+
+She stood letting him adore her and tremble with joy of her. 
+It healed her hurt pride.  It healed her; it made her glad.  It made
+her feel erect and proud again.  Her pride had been wounded inside her. 
+She had been cheapened.  Now she radiated with joy and pride again. 
+It was her restoration and her recognition.
+
+Then he looked at her, his face radiant.  They laughed to
+each other, and he strained her to his chest.  The seconds ticked off,
+the minutes passed, and still the two stood clasped rigid together,
+mouth to mouth, like a statue in one block.
+
+But again his fingers went seeking over her, restless,
+wandering, dissatisfied.  The hot blood came up wave upon wave. 
+She laid her head on his shoulder.
+
+"Come you to my room," he murmured.
+
+She looked at him and shook her head, her mouth pouting
+disconsolately, her eyes heavy with passion.  He watched her fixedly.
+
+"Yes!" he said.
+
+Again she shook her head.
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him still heavily, sorrowfully, and again she
+shook her head.  His eyes hardened, and he gave way.
+
+When, later on, he was back in bed, he wondered why she had
+refused to come to him openly, so that her mother would know. 
+At any rate, then things would have been definite.  And she could
+have stayed with him the night, without having to go, as she was,
+to her mother's bed.  It was strange, and he could not understand it. 
+And then almost immediately he fell asleep.
+
+He awoke in the morning with someone speaking to him. 
+Opening his eyes, he saw Mrs. Radford, big and stately, looking down
+on him.  She held a cup of tea in her hand.
+
+"Do you think you're going to sleep till Doomsday?" she said.
+
+He laughed at once.
+
+"It ought only to be about five o'clock," he said.
+
+"Well," she answered, "it's half-past seven, whether or not. 
+Here, I've brought you a cup of tea."
+
+He rubbed his face, pushed the tumbled hair off his forehead,
+and roused himself.
+
+"What's it so late for!" he grumbled.
+
+He resented being wakened.  It amused her.  She saw his neck
+in the flannel sleeping-jacket, as white and round as a girl's.  He
+rubbed his hair crossly.
+
+"It's no good your scratching your head," she said. 
+"It won't make it no earlier.  Here, an' how long d'you think I'm
+going to stand waiting wi' this here cup?"
+
+"Oh, dash the cup!" he said.
+
+"You should go to bed earlier," said the woman.
+
+He looked up at her, laughing with impudence.
+
+"I went to bed before YOU did," he said.
+
+"Yes, my Guyney, you did!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Fancy," he said, stirring his tea, "having tea brought to bed
+to me!  My mother'll think I'm ruined for life."
+
+"Don't she never do it?" asked Mrs. Radford.
+
+"She'd as leave think of flying."
+
+"Ah, I always spoilt my lot!  That's why they've turned out
+such bad uns," said the elderly woman.
+
+"You'd only Clara," he said.  "And Mr. Radford's in heaven. 
+So I suppose there's only you left to be the bad un."
+
+"I'm not bad; I'm only soft," she said, as she went out
+of the bedroom.  "I'm only a fool, I am!"
+
+Clara was very quiet at breakfast, but she had a sort of air
+of proprietorship over him that pleased him infinitely.  Mrs. Radford
+was evidently fond of him.  He began to talk of his painting.
+
+"What's the good," exclaimed the mother, "of your whittling
+and worrying and twistin' and too-in' at that painting of yours? 
+What GOOD does it do you, I should like to know?  You'd better
+be enjoyin' yourself."
+
+"Oh, but," exclaimed Paul, "I made over thirty guineas last year."
+
+"Did you!  Well, that's a consideration, but it's nothing
+to the time you put in."
+
+"And I've got four pounds owing.  A man said he'd give me five
+pounds if I'd paint him and his missis and the dog and the cottage. 
+And I went and put the fowls in instead of the dog, and he was waxy,
+so I had to knock a quid off.  I was sick of it, and I didn't like
+the dog.  I made a picture of it.  What shall I do when he pays me
+the four pounds?"
+
+"Nay! you know your own uses for your money," said Mrs. Radford.
+
+"But I'm going to bust this four pounds.  Should we go
+to the seaside for a day or two?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"You and Clara and me."
+
+"What, on your money!" she exclaimed, half-wrathful.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"YOU wouldn't be long in breaking your neck at a hurdle race!"
+she said.
+
+"So long as I get a good run for my money!  Will you?"
+
+"Nay; you may settle that atween you."
+
+"And you're willing?" he asked, amazed and rejoicing.
+
+"You'll do as you like," said Mrs. Radford, "whether I'm
+willing or not."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BAXTER DAWES
+
+SOON after Paul had been to the theatre with Clara, he was drinking
+in the Punch Bowl with some friends of his when Dawes came in. 
+Clara's husband was growing stout; his eyelids were getting slack
+over his brown eyes; he was losing his healthy firmness of flesh. 
+He was very evidently on the downward track.  Having quarrelled
+with his sister, he had gone into cheap lodgings.  His mistress
+had left him for a man who would marry her.  He had been in prison
+one night for fighting when he was drunk, and there was a shady
+betting episode in which he was concerned.
+
+Paul and he were confirmed enemies, and yet there was between
+them that peculiar feeling of intimacy, as if they were secretly
+near to each other, which sometimes exists between two people,
+although they never speak to one another.  Paul often thought of
+Baxter Dawes, often wanted to get at him and be friends with him. 
+He knew that Dawes often thought about him, and that the man was
+drawn to him by some bond or other.  And yet the two never looked
+at each other save in hostility.
+
+Since he was a superior employee at Jordan's, it was the thing
+for Paul to offer Dawes a drink.
+
+"What'll you have?" he asked of him.
+
+"Nowt wi' a bleeder like you!" replied the man.
+
+Paul turned away with a slight disdainful movement of the shoulders,
+very irritating.
+
+"The aristocracy," he continued, "is really a military institution. 
+Take Germany, now.  She's got thousands of aristocrats whose only
+means of existence is the army.  They're deadly poor, and life's
+deadly slow.  So they hope for a war.  They look for war as a chance
+of getting on.  Till there's a war they are idle good-for-nothings.
+When there's a war, they are leaders and commanders.  There you are,
+then--they WANT war!"
+
+He was not a favourite debater in the public-house, being too
+quick and overbearing.  He irritated the older men by his assertive
+manner, and his cocksureness.  They listened in silence, and were
+not sorry when he finished.
+
+Dawes interrupted the young man's flow of eloquence by asking,
+in a loud sneer:
+
+"Did you learn all that at th' theatre th' other night?"
+
+Paul looked at him; their eyes met.  Then he knew Dawes had
+seen him coming out of the theatre with Clara.
+
+"Why, what about th' theatre?" asked one of Paul's associates,
+glad to get a dig at the young fellow, and sniffing something tasty.
+
+"Oh, him in a bob-tailed evening suit, on the lardy-da!"
+sneered Dawes, jerking his head contemptuously at Paul.
+
+"That's comin' it strong," said the mutual friend. 
+"Tart an' all?"
+
+"Tart, begod!" said Dawes.
+
+"Go on; let's have it!" cried the mutual friend.
+
+"You've got it," said Dawes, "an' I reckon Morelly had it an' all."
+
+"Well, I'll be jiggered!" said the mutual friend.  "An' was it
+a proper tart?"
+
+"Tart, God blimey--yes!"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Oh," said Dawes, "I reckon he spent th' night---"
+
+There was a good deal of laughter at Paul's expense.
+
+"But who WAS she?  D'you know her?" asked the mutual friend.
+
+"I should SHAY SHO," said Dawes.
+
+This brought another burst of laughter.
+
+"Then spit it out," said the mutual friend.
+
+Dawes shook his head, and took a gulp of beer.
+
+"It's a wonder he hasn't let on himself," he said. 
+"He'll be braggin' of it in a bit."
+
+"Come on, Paul," said the friend; "it's no good.  You might
+just as well own up."
+
+"Own up what?  That I happened to take a friend to the theatre?"
+
+"Oh well, if it was all right, tell us who she was, lad,"
+said the friend.
+
+"She WAS all right," said Dawes.
+
+Paul was furious.  Dawes wiped his golden moustache with
+his fingers, sneering.
+
+"Strike me---!  One o' that sort?" said the mutual friend. 
+"Paul, boy, I'm surprised at you.  And do you know her, Baxter?"
+
+"Just a bit, like!"
+
+He winked at the other men.
+
+"Oh well," said Paul, "I'll be going!"
+
+The mutual friend laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Nay," he said, "you don't get off as easy as that, my lad. 
+We've got to have a full account of this business."
+
+"Then get it from Dawes!" he said.
+
+"You shouldn't funk your own deeds, man," remonstrated the friend.
+
+Then Dawes made a remark which caused Paul to throw half
+a glass of beer in his face.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Morel!" cried the barmaid, and she rang the bell
+for the "chucker-out".
+
+Dawes spat and rushed for the young man.  At that minute
+a brawny fellow with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and his trousers
+tight over his haunches intervened.
+
+"Now, then!" he said, pushing his chest in front of Dawes.
+
+"Come out!" cried Dawes.
+
+Paul was leaning, white and quivering, against the brass rail
+of the bar.  He hated Dawes, wished something could exterminate
+him at that minute; and at the same time, seeing the wet hair on
+the man's forehead, he thought he looked pathetic.  He did not move.
+
+"Come out, you ---," said Dawes.
+
+"That's enough, Dawes," cried the barmaid.
+
+"Come on," said the "chucker-out", with kindly insistence,
+"you'd better be getting on."
+
+And, by making Dawes edge away from his own close proximity,
+he worked him to the door.
+
+"THAT'S the little sod as started it!" cried Dawes,
+half-cowed, pointing to Paul Morel.
+
+"Why, what a story, Mr. Dawes!" said the barmaid.  "You know
+it was you all the time."
+
+Still the "chucker-out" kept thrusting his chest forward at him,
+still he kept edging back, until he was in the doorway and on the
+steps outside; then he turned round.
+
+"All right," he said, nodding straight at his rival.
+
+Paul had a curious sensation of pity, almost of affection,
+mingled with violent hate, for the man.  The coloured door swung to;
+there was silence in the bar.
+
+"Serve, him, jolly well right!" said the barmaid.
+
+"But it's a nasty thing to get a glass of beer in your eyes,"
+said the mutual friend.
+
+"I tell you I was glad he did," said the barmaid.  "Will you
+have another, Mr. Morel?"
+
+She held up Paul's glass questioningly.  He nodded.
+
+"He's a man as doesn't care for anything, is Baxter Dawes,"
+said one.
+
+"Pooh! is he?" said the barmaid.  "He's a loud-mouthed one,
+he is, and they're never much good.  Give me a pleasant-spoken chap,
+if you want a devil!"
+
+"Well, Paul, my lad," said the friend, "you'll have to take
+care of yourself now for a while."
+
+"You won't have to give him a chance over you, that's all,"
+said the barmaid.
+
+"Can you box?" asked a friend.
+
+"Not a bit," he answered, still very white.
+
+"I might give you a turn or two," said the friend.
+
+"Thanks, I haven't time."
+
+And presently he took his departure.
+
+"Go along with him, Mr. Jenkinson," whispered the barmaid,
+tipping Mr. Jenkinson the wink.
+
+The man nodded, took his hat, said:  "Good-night all!"
+very heartily, and followed Paul, calling:
+
+"Half a minute, old man.  You an' me's going the same road,
+I believe."
+
+"Mr. Morel doesn't like it," said the barmaid.  "You'll see,
+we shan't have him in much more.  I'm sorry; he's good company. 
+And Baxter Dawes wants locking up, that's what he wants."
+
+Paul would have died rather than his mother should get
+to know of this affair.  He suffered tortures of humiliation
+and self-consciousness.  There was now a good deal of his life
+of which necessarily he could not speak to his mother.  He had
+a life apart from her--his sexual life.  The rest she still kept. 
+But he felt he had to conceal something from her, and it irked him. 
+There was a certain silence between them, and he felt he had,
+in that silence, to defend himself against her; he felt condemned
+by her.  Then sometimes he hated her, and pulled at her bondage. 
+His life wanted to free itself of her.  It was like a circle where life
+turned back on itself, and got no farther.  She bore him, loved him,
+kept him, and his love turned back into her, so that he could not
+be free to go forward with his own life, really love another woman. 
+At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother's influence. 
+He did not tell her things; there was a distance between them.
+
+Clara was happy, almost sure of him.  She felt she had at last
+got him for herself; and then again came the uncertainty.  He told
+her jestingly of the affair with her husband.  Her colour came up,
+her grey eyes flashed.
+
+"That's him to a 'T'," she cried--"like a navvy!  He's not fit
+for mixing with decent folk."
+
+"Yet you married him," he said.
+
+It made her furious that he reminded her.
+
+"I did!" she cried.  "But how was I to know?"
+
+"I think he might have been rather nice," he said.
+
+"You think I made him what he is!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh no! he made himself.  But there's something about him---"
+
+Clara looked at her lover closely.  There was something in him
+she hated, a sort of detached criticism of herself, a coldness
+which made her woman's soul harden against him.
+
+"And what are you going to do?" she asked.
+
+"How?"
+
+"About Baxter."
+
+"There's nothing to do, is there?" he replied.
+
+"You can fight him if you have to, I suppose?" she said.
+
+"No; I haven't the least sense of the 'fist'.  It's funny. 
+With most men there's the instinct to clench the fist and hit. 
+It's not so with me.  I should want a knife or a pistol or something
+to fight with."
+
+"Then you'd better carry something," she said.
+
+"Nay," he laughed; "I'm not daggeroso."
+
+"But he'll do something to you.  You don't know him."
+
+"All right," he said, "we'll see."
+
+"And you'll let him?"
+
+"Perhaps, if I can't help it."
+
+"And if he kills you?" she said.
+
+"I should be sorry, for his sake and mine."
+
+Clara was silent for a moment.
+
+"You DO make me angry!" she exclaimed.
+
+"That's nothing afresh," he laughed.
+
+"But why are you so silly?  You don't know him."
+
+"And don't want."
+
+"Yes, but you're not going to let a man do as he likes with you?"
+
+"What must I do?" he replied, laughing.
+
+"I should carry a revolver," she said.  "I'm sure he's dangerous."
+
+"I might blow my fingers off," he said.
+
+"No; but won't you?" she pleaded.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not anything?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you'll leave him to---?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are a fool!"
+
+"Fact!"
+
+She set her teeth with anger.
+
+"I could SHAKE you!" she cried, trembling with passion.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Let a man like HIM do as he likes with you."
+
+"You can go back to him if he triumphs," he said.
+
+"Do you want me to hate you?" she asked.
+
+"Well, I only tell you," he said.
+
+"And YOU say you LOVE me!" she exclaimed, low and indignant.
+
+"Ought I to slay him to please you?" he said.  "But if I did,
+see what a hold he'd have over me."
+
+"Do you think I'm a fool!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Not at all.  But you don't understand me, my dear."
+
+There was a pause between them.
+
+"But you ought NOT to expose yourself," she pleaded.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+
+      "'The man in righteousness arrayed,
+      The pure and blameless liver,
+      Needs not the keen Toledo blade,
+      Nor venom-freighted quiver,'"
+
+
+he quoted.
+
+She looked at him searchingly.
+
+"I wish I could understand you," she said.
+
+"There's simply nothing to understand," he laughed.
+
+She bowed her head, brooding.
+
+He did not see Dawes for several days; then one morning as he
+ran upstairs from the Spiral room he almost collided with the burly
+metal-worker.
+
+"What the---!" cried the smith.
+
+"Sorry!" said Paul, and passed on.
+
+"SORRY!" sneered Dawes.
+
+Paul whistled lightly, "Put Me among the Girls".
+
+"I'll stop your whistle, my jockey!" he said.
+
+The other took no notice.
+
+"You're goin' to answer for that job of the other night."
+
+Paul went to his desk in his corner, and turned over the leaves
+of the ledger.
+
+"Go and tell Fanny I want order 097, quick!" he said to his boy.
+
+Dawes stood in the doorway, tall and threatening, looking at
+the top of the young man's head.
+
+"Six and five's eleven and seven's one-and-six," Paul added aloud.
+
+"An' you hear, do you!" said Dawes.
+
+"FIVE AND NINEPENCE!"  He wrote a figure.  "What's that?"
+he said.
+
+"I'm going to show you what it is," said the smith.
+
+The other went on adding the figures aloud.
+
+"Yer crawlin' little ---, yer daresn't face me proper!"
+
+Paul quickly snatched the heavy ruler.  Dawes started. 
+The young man ruled some lines in his ledger.  The elder man
+was infuriated.
+
+"But wait till I light on you, no matter where it is,
+I'll settle your hash for a bit, yer little swine!"
+
+"All right," said Paul.
+
+At that the smith started heavily from the doorway.  Just then
+a whistle piped shrilly.  Paul went to the speaking-tube.
+
+"Yes!" he said, and he listened.  "Er--yes!"  He listened,
+then he laughed.  "I'll come down directly.  I've got a visitor
+just now."
+
+Dawes knew from his tone that he had been speaking to Clara. 
+He stepped forward.
+
+"Yer little devil!" he said.  "I'll visitor you, inside of
+two minutes!  Think I'm goin' to have YOU whipperty-snappin' round?"
+
+The other clerks in the warehouse looked up.  Paul's office-boy
+appeared, holding some white article.
+
+"Fanny says you could have had it last night if you'd let
+her know," he said.
+
+"All right," answered Paul, looking at the stocking. 
+"Get it off."  Dawes stood frustrated, helpless with rage. 
+Morel turned round.
+
+"Excuse me a minute," he said to Dawes, and he would have
+run downstairs.
+
+"By God, I'll stop your gallop!" shouted the smith, seizing him
+by the arm.  He turned quickly.
+
+"Hey!  Hey!" cried the office-boy, alarmed.
+
+Thomas Jordan started out of his little glass office, and came
+running down the room.
+
+"What's a-matter, what's a-matter?" he said, in his old man's
+sharp voice.
+
+"I'm just goin' ter settle this little ---, that's all,"
+said Dawes desperately.
+
+"What do you mean?" snapped Thomas Jordan.
+
+"What I say," said Dawes, but he hung fire.
+
+Morel was leaning against the counter, ashamed, half-grinning.
+
+"What's it all about?" snapped Thomas Jordan.
+
+"Couldn't say," said Paul, shaking his head and shrugging
+his shoulders.
+
+"Couldn't yer, couldn't yer!" cried Dawes, thrusting forward
+his handsome, furious face, and squaring his fist.
+
+"Have you finished?" cried the old man, strutting.  "Get off
+about your business, and don't come here tipsy in the morning."
+
+Dawes turned his big frame slowly upon him.
+
+"Tipsy!" he said.  "Who's tipsy?  I'm no more tipsy than
+YOU are!"
+
+"We've heard that song before," snapped the old man.  "Now you
+get off, and don't be long about it.  Comin' HERE with your rowdying."
+
+The smith looked down contemptuously on his employer. 
+His hands, large, and grimy, and yet well shaped for his labour,
+worked restlessly.  Paul remembered they were the hands of Clara's
+husband, and a flash of hate went through him.
+
+"Get out before you're turned out!" snapped Thomas Jordan.
+
+"Why, who'll turn me out?" said Dawes, beginning to sneer.
+
+Mr. Jordan started, marched up to the smith, waving him off,
+thrusting his stout little figure at the man, saying:
+
+"Get off my premises--get off!"
+
+He seized and twitched Dawes's arm.
+
+"Come off!" said the smith, and with a jerk of the elbow he
+sent the little manufacturer staggering backwards.
+
+Before anyone could help him, Thomas Jordan had collided
+with the flimsy spring-door.  It had given way, and let him crash
+down the half-dozen steps into Fanny's room.  There was a second
+of amazement; then men and girls were running.  Dawes stood a moment
+looking bitterly on the scene, then he took his departure.
+
+Thomas Jordan was shaken and braised, not otherwise hurt. 
+He was, however, beside himself with rage.  He dismissed Dawes from
+his employment, and summoned him for assault.
+
+At the trial Paul Morel had to give evidence.  Asked how
+the trouble began, he said:
+
+"Dawes took occasion to insult Mrs. Dawes and me because I
+accompanied her to the theatre one evening; then I threw some beer
+at him, and he wanted his revenge."
+
+"Cherchez la femme!" smiled the magistrate.
+
+The case was dismissed after the magistrate had told Dawes he
+thought him a skunk.
+
+"You gave the case away," snapped Mr. Jordan to Paul.
+
+"I don't think I did," replied the latter.  "Besides, you
+didn't really want a conviction, did you?"
+
+"What do you think I took the case up for?"
+
+"Well," said Paul, "I'm sorry if I said the wrong thing." 
+Clara was also very angry.
+
+"Why need MY name have been dragged in?" she said.
+
+"Better speak it openly than leave it to be whispered."
+
+"There was no need for anything at all," she declared.
+
+"We are none the poorer," he said indifferently.
+
+"YOU may not be," she said.
+
+"And you?" he asked.
+
+"I need never have been mentioned."
+
+"I'm sorry," he said; but he did not sound sorry.
+
+He told himself easily:  "She will come round."  And she did.
+
+He told his mother about the fall of Mr. Jordan and the trial
+of Dawes.  Mrs. Morel watched him closely.
+
+"And what do you think of it all?" she asked him.
+
+"I think he's a fool," he said.
+
+But he was very uncomfortable, nevertheless.
+
+"Have you ever considered where it will end?" his mother said.
+
+"No," he answered; "things work out of themselves."
+
+"They do, in a way one doesn't like, as a rule," said his mother.
+
+"And then one has to put up with them," he said.
+
+"You'll find you're not as good at 'putting up' as you imagine,"
+she said.
+
+He went on working rapidly at his design.
+
+"Do you ever ask HER opinion?" she said at length.
+
+"What of?"
+
+"Of you, and the whole thing."
+
+"I don't care what her opinion of me is.  She's fearfully
+in love with me, but it's not very deep."
+
+"But quite as deep as your feeling for her."
+
+He looked up at his mother curiously.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "You know, mother, I think there must be
+something the matter with me, that I CAN'T love.  When she's there,
+as a rule, I DO love her.  Sometimes, when I see her just as THE WOMAN,
+I love her, mother; but then, when she talks and criticises,
+I often don't listen to her."
+
+"Yet she's as much sense as Miriam."
+
+"Perhaps; and I love her better than Miriam.  But WHY don't
+they hold me?"
+
+The last question was almost a lamentation.  His mother
+turned away her face, sat looking across the room, very quiet,
+grave, with something of renunciation.
+
+"But you wouldn't want to marry Clara?" she said.
+
+"No; at first perhaps I would.  But why--why don't I want to marry
+her or anybody?  I feel sometimes as if I wronged my women, mother."
+
+"How wronged them, my son?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He went on painting rather despairingly; he had touched
+the quick of the trouble.
+
+"And as for wanting to marry," said his mother, "there's plenty
+of time yet."
+
+"But no, mother.  I even love Clara, and I did Miriam; but to GIVE
+myself to them in marriage I couldn't.  I couldn't belong to them. 
+They seem to want ME, and I can't ever give it them."
+
+"You haven't met the right woman."
+
+"And I never shall meet the right woman while you live,"
+he said.
+
+She was very quiet.  Now she began to feel again tired,
+as if she were done.
+
+"We'll see, my son," she answered.
+
+The feeling that things were going in a circle made him mad.
+
+Clara was, indeed, passionately in love with him, and he with her,
+as far as passion went.  In the daytime he forgot her a good deal. 
+She was working in the same building, but he was not aware of it. 
+He was busy, and her existence was of no matter to him.  But all the
+time she was in her Spiral room she had a sense that he was upstairs,
+a physical sense of his person in the same building.  Every second
+she expected him to come through the door, and when he came it
+was a shock to her.  But he was often short and offhand with her. 
+He gave her his directions in an official manner, keeping her at bay. 
+With what wits she had left she listened to him.  She dared not
+misunderstand or fail to remember, but it was a cruelty to her. 
+She wanted to touch his chest.  She knew exactly how his breast was
+shapen under the waistcoat, and she wanted to touch it.  It maddened
+her to hear his mechanical voice giving orders about the work. 
+She wanted to break through the sham of it, smash the trivial coating
+of business which covered him with hardness, get at the man again;
+but she was afraid, and before she could feel one touch of his warmth he
+was gone, and she ached again.
+
+He knew that she was dreary every evening she did not see him,
+so he gave her a good deal of his time.  The days were often
+a misery to her, but the evenings and the nights were usually
+a bliss to them both.  Then they were silent.  For hours they
+sat together, or walked together in the dark, and talked only
+a few, almost meaningless words.  But he had her hand in his,
+and her bosom left its warmth in his chest, making him feel whole.
+
+One evening they were walking down by the canal,
+and something was troubling him.  She knew she had not got him. 
+All the time he whistled softly and persistently to himself. 
+She listened, feeling she could learn more from his whistling than
+from his speech.  It was a sad dissatisfied tune--a tune that made
+her feel he would not stay with her.  She walked on in silence. 
+When they came to the swing bridge he sat down on the great pole,
+looking at the stars in the water.  He was a long way from her.  
+She had been thinking.
+
+"Will you always stay at Jordan's?" she asked.
+
+"No," he answered without reflecting.  "No; I s'll leave
+Nottingham and go abroad--soon."
+
+"Go abroad!  What for?"
+
+"I dunno!  I feel restless."
+
+"But what shall you do?"
+
+"I shall have to get some steady designing work, and some sort
+of sale for my pictures first," he said.  "I am gradually making
+my way.  I know I am."
+
+"And when do you think you'll go?"
+
+"I don't know.  I shall hardly go for long, while there's
+my mother."
+
+"You couldn't leave her?"
+
+"Not for long."
+
+She looked at the stars in the black water.  They lay very
+white and staring.  It was an agony to know he would leave her,
+but it was almost an agony to have him near her.
+
+"And if you made a nice lot of money, what would you do?"
+she asked.
+
+"Go somewhere in a pretty house near London with my mother."
+
+"I see."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"I could still come and see you," he said.  "I don't know. 
+Don't ask me what I should do; I don't know."
+
+There was a silence.  The stars shuddered and broke upon
+the water.  There came a breath of wind.  He went suddenly to her,
+and put his hand on her shoulder.
+
+"Don't ask me anything about the future," he said miserably. 
+"I don't know anything.  Be with me now, will you, no matter what
+it is?"
+
+And she took him in her arms.  After all, she was a married woman,
+and she had no right even to what he gave her.  He needed her badly. 
+She had him in her arms, and he was miserable.  With her warmth she
+folded him over, consoled him, loved him.  She would let the moment
+stand for itself.
+
+After a moment he lifted his head as if he wanted to speak.
+
+"Clara," he said, struggling.
+
+She caught him passionately to her, pressed his head down on her
+breast with her hand.  She could not bear the suffering in his voice. 
+She was afraid in her soul.  He might have anything of her--anything;
+but she did not want to KNOW.  She felt she could not bear it. 
+She wanted him to be soothed upon her--soothed.  She stood clasping him
+and caressing him, and he was something unknown to her--something
+almost uncanny.  She wanted to soothe him into forgetfulness.
+
+And soon the struggle went down in his soul, and he forgot. 
+But then Clara was not there for him, only a woman, warm, something he
+loved and almost worshipped, there in the dark.  But it was not Clara,
+and she submitted to him.  The naked hunger and inevitability
+of his loving her, something strong and blind and ruthless
+in its primitiveness, made the hour almost terrible to her. 
+She knew how stark and alone he was, and she felt it was great
+that he came to her; and she took him simply because his need was
+bigger either than her or him, and her soul was still within her. 
+She did this for him in his need, even if he left her, for she
+loved him.
+
+All the while the peewits were screaming in the field. 
+When he came to, he wondered what was near his eyes, curving and
+strong with life in the dark, and what voice it was speaking. 
+Then he realised it was the grass, and the peewit was calling. 
+The warmth was Clara's breathing heaving.  He lifted his head,
+and looked into her eyes.  They were dark and shining and strange,
+life wild at the source staring into his life, stranger to him,
+yet meeting him; and he put his face down on her throat, afraid. 
+What was she?  A strong, strange, wild life, that breathed with his
+in the darkness through this hour.  It was all so much bigger than
+themselves that he was hushed.  They had met, and included in their
+meeting the thrust of the manifold grass stems, the cry of the peewit,
+the wheel of the stars.
+
+When they stood up they saw other lovers stealing down the
+opposite hedge.  It seemed natural they were there; the night
+contained them.
+
+And after such an evening they both were very still, having known
+the immensity of passion.  They felt small, half-afraid, childish
+and wondering, like Adam and Eve when they lost their innocence
+and realised the magnificence of the power which drove
+them out of Paradise and across the great night and the great day
+of humanity.  It was for each of them an initiation and a satisfaction.
+To know their own nothingness, to know the tremendous living flood
+which carried them always, gave them rest within themselves. 
+If so great a magnificent power could overwhelm them, identify them
+altogether with itself, so that they knew they were only grains in
+the tremendous heave that lifted every grass blade its little height,
+and every tree, and living thing, then why fret about themselves? 
+They could let themselves be carried by life, and they felt a sort
+of peace each in the other.  There was a verification which they had
+had together.  Nothing could nullify it, nothing could take it away;
+it was almost their belief in life.
+
+But Clara was not satisfied.  Something great was there,
+she knew; something great enveloped her.  But it did not keep her. 
+In the morning it was not the same.  They had KNOWN, but she
+could not keep the moment.  She wanted it again; she wanted
+something permanent.  She had not realised fully.  She thought
+it was he whom she wanted.  He was not safe to her.  This that
+had been between them might never be again; he might leave her. 
+She had not got him; she was not satisfied.  She had been there,
+but she had not gripped the--the something--she knew not what--which she
+was mad to have.
+
+In the morning he had considerable peace, and was happy
+in himself.  It seemed almost as if he had known the baptism of
+fire in passion, and it left him at rest.  But it was not Clara. 
+It was something that happened because of her, but it was not her. 
+They were scarcely any nearer each other.  It was as if they had been
+blind agents of a great force.
+
+When she saw him that day at the factory her heart melted like
+a drop of fire.  It was his body, his brows.  The drop of fire grew
+more intense in her breast; she must hold him.  But he, very quiet,
+very subdued this morning, went on giving his instruction.  She followed
+him into the dark, ugly basement, and lifted her arms to him. 
+He kissed her, and the intensity of passion began to burn him again. 
+Somebody was at the door.  He ran upstairs; she returned to her room,
+moving as if in a trance.
+
+After that the fire slowly went down.  He felt more and more that
+his experience had been impersonal, and not Clara.  He loved her. 
+There was a big tenderness, as after a strong emotion they
+had known together; but it was not she who could keep his soul steady.  
+He had wanted her to be something she could not be.
+
+And she was mad with desire of him.  She could not see
+him without touching him.  In the factory, as he talked to her
+about Spiral hose, she ran her hand secretly along his side. 
+She followed him out into the basement for a quick kiss; her eyes,
+always mute and yearning, full of unrestrained passion, she kept
+fixed on his.  He was afraid of her, lest she should too flagrantly
+give herself away before the other girls.  She invariably waited
+for him at dinnertime for him to embrace her before she went. 
+He felt as if she were helpless, almost a burden to him, and it
+irritated him.
+
+"But what do you always want to be kissing and embracing for?"
+he said.  "Surely there's a time for everything."
+
+She looked up at him, and the hate came into her eyes.
+
+"DO I always want to be kissing you?" she said.
+
+"Always, even if I come to ask you about the work.  I don't
+want anything to do with love when I'm at work.  Work's work---"
+
+"And what is love?" she asked.  "Has it to have special hours?"
+
+"Yes; out of work hours."
+
+"And you'll regulate it according to Mr. Jordan's closing time?"
+
+"Yes; and according to the freedom from business of any sort."
+
+"It is only to exist in spare time?"
+
+"That's all, and not always then--not the kissing sort of love."
+
+"And that's all you think of it?"
+
+"It's quite enough."
+
+"I'm glad you think so."
+
+And she was cold to him for some time--she hated him; and while
+she was cold and contemptuous, he was uneasy till she had forgiven
+him again.  But when they started afresh they were not any nearer. 
+He kept her because he never satisfied her.
+
+In the spring they went together to the seaside.  They had rooms
+at a little cottage near Theddlethorpe, and lived as man and wife. 
+Mrs. Radford sometimes went with them.
+
+It was known in Nottingham that Paul Morel and Mrs. Dawes
+were going together, but as nothing was very obvious, and Clara
+always a solitary person, and he seemed so simple and innocent,
+it did not make much difference.
+
+He loved the Lincolnshire coast, and she loved the sea. 
+In the early morning they often went out together to bathe. 
+The grey of the dawn, the far, desolate reaches of the fenland 
+smitten with winter, the sea-meadows rank with herbage, were stark 
+enough to rejoice his soul.  As they stepped on to the highroad from 
+their plank bridge, and looked round at the endless monotony of levels, 
+the land a little darker than the sky, the sea sounding small beyond 
+the sandhills, his heart filled strong with the sweeping relentlessness 
+of life.  She loved him then.  He was solitary and strong, and his eyes 
+had a beautiful light.
+
+They shuddered with cold; then he raced her down the road to
+the green turf bridge.  She could run well.  Her colour soon came,
+her throat was bare, her eyes shone.  He loved her for being so
+luxuriously heavy, and yet so quick.  Himself was light; she went
+with a beautiful rush.  They grew warm, and walked hand in hand.
+
+A flush came into the sky, the wan moon, half-way down
+the west, sank into insignificance.  On the shadowy land things
+began to take life, plants with great leaves became distinct. 
+They came through a pass in the big, cold sandhills on to the beach. 
+The long waste of foreshore lay moaning under the dawn and the sea;
+the ocean was a flat dark strip with a white edge.  Over the gloomy
+sea the sky grew red.  Quickly the fire spread among the clouds
+and scattered them.  Crimson burned to orange, orange to dull gold,
+and in a golden glitter the sun came up, dribbling fierily over the
+waves in little splashes, as if someone had gone along and the light
+had spilled from her pail as she walked.
+
+The breakers ran down the shore in long, hoarse strokes. 
+Tiny seagulls, like specks of spray, wheeled above the line of surf. 
+Their crying seemed larger than they.  Far away the coast reached out,
+and melted into the morning, the tussocky sandhills seemed to sink
+to a level with the beach.  Mablethorpe was tiny on their right. 
+They had alone the space of all this level shore, the sea, and the
+upcoming sun, the faint noise of the waters, the sharp crying of
+the gulls.
+
+They had a warm hollow in the sandhills where the wind did
+not come.  He stood looking out to sea.
+
+"It's very fine," he said.
+
+"Now don't get sentimental," she said.
+
+It irritated her to see him standing gazing at the sea, like a
+solitary and poetic person.  He laughed.  She quickly undressed.
+
+"There are some fine waves this morning," she said triumphantly.
+
+She was a better swimmer than he; he stood idly watching her.
+
+"Aren't you coming?" she said.
+
+"In a minute," he answered.
+
+She was white and velvet skinned, with heavy shoulders. 
+A little wind, coming from the sea, blew across her body and ruffled
+her hair.
+
+The morning was of a lovely limpid gold colour.  Veils of shadow
+seemed to be drifting away on the north and the south.  Clara stood
+shrinking slightly from the touch of the wind, twisting her hair. 
+The sea-grass rose behind the white stripped woman.  She glanced
+at the sea, then looked at him.  He was watching her with dark eyes
+which she loved and could not understand.  She hugged her breasts
+between her arms, cringing, laughing:
+
+"Oo, it will be so cold!" she said.
+
+He bent forward and kissed her, held her suddenly close,
+and kissed her again.  She stood waiting.  He looked into her eyes,
+then away at the pale sands.
+
+"Go, then!" he said quietly.
+
+She flung her arms round his neck, drew him against her,
+kissed him passionately, and went, saying:
+
+"But you'll come in?"
+
+"In a minute."
+
+She went plodding heavily over the sand that was soft as velvet. 
+He, on the sandhills, watched the great pale coast envelop her. 
+She grew smaller, lost proportion, seemed only like a large white
+bird toiling forward.
+
+"Not much more than a big white pebble on the beach, not much
+more than a clot of foam being blown and rolled over the sand,"
+he said to himself.
+
+She seemed to move very slowly across the vast sounding shore. 
+As he watched, he lost her.  She was dazzled out of sight by
+the sunshine.  Again he saw her, the merest white speck moving
+against the white, muttering sea-edge.
+
+"Look how little she is!" he said to himself.  "She's lost like
+a grain of sand in the beach--just a concentrated speck blown along,
+a tiny white foam-bubble, almost nothing among the morning. 
+Why does she absorb me?"
+
+The morning was altogether uninterrupted:  she was gone in
+the water.  Far and wide the beach, the sandhills with their blue marrain,
+the shining water, glowed together in immense, unbroken solitude.
+
+"What is she, after all?" he said to himself.  "Here's the
+seacoast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is she,
+fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble of foam. 
+What does she mean to me, after all?  She represents something,
+like a bubble of foam represents the sea.  But what is she? 
+It's not her I care for."
+
+Then, startled by his own unconscious thoughts, that seemed
+to speak so distinctly that all the morning could hear, he undressed
+and ran quickly down the sands.  She was watching for him.  Her arm
+flashed up to him, she heaved on a wave, subsided, her shoulders
+in a pool of liquid silver.  He jumped through the breakers,
+and in a moment her hand was on his shoulder.
+
+He was a poor swimmer, and could not stay long in the water. 
+She played round him in triumph, sporting with her superiority,
+which he begrudged her.  The sunshine stood deep and fine on the water. 
+They laughed in the sea for a minute or two, then raced each other back
+to the sandhills.
+
+When they were drying themselves, panting heavily,
+he watched her laughing, breathless face, her bright shoulders,
+her breasts that swayed and made him frightened as she rubbed them,
+and he thought again:
+
+"But she is magnificent, and even bigger than the morning
+and the sea.  Is she---? Is she---"
+
+She, seeing his dark eyes fixed on her, broke off from her
+drying with a laugh.
+
+"What are you looking at?" she said.
+
+"You," he answered, laughing.
+
+Her eyes met his, and in a moment he was kissing
+her white "goose-fleshed" shoulder, and thinking:
+
+"What is she?  What is she?"
+
+She loved him in the morning.  There was something detached,
+hard, and elemental about his kisses then, as if he were only
+conscious of his own will, not in the least of her and her wanting him.
+
+Later in the day he went out sketching.
+
+"You," he said to her, "go with your mother to Sutton. 
+I am so dull."
+
+She stood and looked at him.  He knew she wanted to come
+with him, but he preferred to be alone.  She made him feel imprisoned
+when she was there, as if he could not get a free deep breath,
+as if there were something on top of him.  She felt his desire
+to be free of her.
+
+In the evening he came back to her.  They walked down the shore
+in the darkness, then sat for a while in the shelter of the sandhills.
+
+"It seems," she said, as they stared over the darkness of the sea,
+where no light was to be seen--"it seemed as if you only loved me
+at night--as if you didn't love me in the daytime."
+
+He ran the cold sand through his fingers, feeling guilty
+under the accusation.
+
+"The night is free to you," he replied.  "In the daytime I
+want to be by myself."
+
+"But why?" she said.  "Why, even now, when we are on this
+short holiday?"
+
+"I don't know.  Love-making stifles me in the daytime."
+
+"But it needn't be always love-making," she said.
+
+"It always is," he answered, "when you and I are together."
+
+She sat feeling very bitter.
+
+"Do you ever want to marry me?" he asked curiously.
+
+"Do you me?" she replied.
+
+"Yes, yes; I should like us to have children," he answered slowly.
+
+She sat with her head bent, fingering the sand.
+
+"But you don't really want a divorce from Baxter, do you?"
+he said.
+
+It was some minutes before she replied.
+
+"No," she said, very deliberately; "I don't think I do."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Do you feel as if you belonged to him?"
+
+"No; I don't think so."
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"I think he belongs to me," she replied.
+
+He was silent for some minutes, listening to the wind blowing
+over the hoarse, dark sea.
+
+"And you never really intended to belong to ME?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I do belong to you," she answered.
+
+"No," he said; "because you don't want to be divorced."
+
+It was a knot they could not untie, so they left it, took what
+they could get, and what they could not attain they ignored.
+
+"I consider you treated Baxter rottenly," he said another time.
+
+He half-expected Clara to answer him, as his mother would: 
+"You consider your own affairs, and don't know so much about
+other people's."  But she took him seriously, almost to his own surprise.
+
+"Why?" she said.
+
+"I suppose you thought he was a lily of the valley, and so
+you put him in an appropriate pot, and tended him according. 
+You made up your mind he was a lily of the valley and it was no
+good his being a cow-parsnip.  You wouldn't have it."
+
+"I certainly never imagined him a lily of the valley."
+
+"You imagined him something he wasn't.  That's just what a woman is. 
+She thinks she knows what's good for a man, and she's going to see
+he gets it; and no matter if he's starving, he may sit and whistle
+for what he needs, while she's got him, and is giving him what's
+good for him."
+
+"And what are you doing?" she asked.
+
+"I'm thinking what tune I shall whistle," he laughed.
+
+And instead of boxing his ears, she considered him in earnest.
+
+"You think I want to give you what's good for you?" she asked.
+
+"I hope so; but love should give a sense of freedom,
+not of prison.  Miriam made me feel tied up like a donkey to a stake. 
+I must feed on her patch, and nowhere else.  It's sickening!"
+
+"And would YOU let a WOMAN do as she likes?"
+
+"Yes; I'll see that she likes to love me.  If she doesn't--well,
+I don't hold her."
+
+"If you were as wonderful as you say---," replied Clara.
+
+"I should be the marvel I am," he laughed.
+
+There was a silence in which they hated each other,
+though they laughed.
+
+"Love's a dog in a manger," he said.
+
+"And which of us is the dog?" she asked.
+
+"Oh well, you, of course."
+
+So there went on a battle between them.  She knew she never fully
+had him.  Some part, big and vital in him, she had no hold over;
+nor did she ever try to get it, or even to realise what it was. 
+And he knew in some way that she held herself still as Mrs. Dawes. 
+She did not love Dawes, never had loved him; but she believed he
+loved her, at least depended on her.  She felt a certain surety
+about him that she never felt with Paul Morel.  Her passion
+for the young man had filled her soul, given her a certain
+satisfaction, eased her of her self-mistrust, her doubt. 
+Whatever else she was, she was inwardly assured.  It was almost
+as if she had gained HERSELF, and stood now distinct and complete. 
+She had received her confirmation; but she never believed that her
+life belonged to Paul Morel, nor his to her.  They would separate
+in the end, and the rest of her life would be an ache after him. 
+But at any rate, she knew now, she was sure of herself.  And the
+same could almost be said of him.  Together they had received
+the baptism of life, each through the other; but now their missions
+were separate.  Where he wanted to go she could not come with him. 
+They would have to part sooner or later.  Even if they married,
+and were faithful to each other, still he would have to leave her,
+go on alone, and she would only have to attend to him when he
+came home.  But it was not possible.  Each wanted a mate to go side
+by side with.
+
+Clara had gone to live with her mother upon Mapperley Plains. 
+One evening, as Paul and she were walking along Woodborough Road,
+they met Dawes.  Morel knew something about the bearing of the
+man approaching, but he was absorbed in his thinking at the moment,
+so that only his artist's eye watched the form of the stranger. 
+Then he suddenly turned to Clara with a laugh, and put his hand on
+her shoulder, saying, laughing:
+
+"But we walk side by side, and yet I'm in London arguing
+with an imaginary Orpen; and where are you?"
+
+At that instant Dawes passed, almost touching Morel. 
+The young man glanced, saw the dark brown eyes burning, full of hate
+and yet tired.
+
+"Who was that?" he asked of Clara.
+
+"It was Baxter," she replied.
+
+Paul took his hand from her shoulder and glanced round;
+then he saw again distinctly the man's form as it approached him. 
+Dawes still walked erect, with his fine shoulders flung back, and his
+face lifted; but there was a furtive look in his eyes that gave
+one the impression he was trying to get unnoticed past every person
+he met, glancing suspiciously to see what they thought of him. 
+And his hands seemed to be wanting to hide.  He wore old clothes,
+the trousers were torn at the knee, and the handkerchief tied round
+his throat was dirty; but his cap was still defiantly over one eye. 
+As she saw him, Clara felt guilty.  There was a tiredness and despair
+on his face that made her hate him, because it hurt her.
+
+"He looks shady," said Paul.
+
+But the note of pity in his voice reproached her, and made
+her feel hard.
+
+"His true commonness comes out," she answered.
+
+"Do you hate him?" he asked.
+
+"You talk," she said, "about the cruelty of women; I wish you
+knew the cruelty of men in their brute force.  They simply don't
+know that the woman exists."
+
+"Don't I?" he said.
+
+"No," she answered.
+
+"Don't I know you exist?"
+
+"About ME you know nothing," she said bitterly--"about ME!"
+
+"No more than Baxter knew?" he asked.
+
+"Perhaps not as much."
+
+He felt puzzled, and helpless, and angry.  There she walked
+unknown to him, though they had been through such experience together.
+
+"But you know ME pretty well," he said.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Did you know Baxter as well as you know me?" he asked.
+
+"He wouldn't let me," she said.
+
+"And I have let you know me?"
+
+"It's what men WON'T let you do.  They won't let you get
+really near to them," she said.
+
+"And haven't I let you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered slowly; "but you've never come near to me. 
+You can't come out of yourself, you can't.  Baxter could do that better
+than you."
+
+He walked on pondering.  He was angry with her for prefering
+Baxter to him.
+
+"You begin to value Baxter now you've not got him," he said.
+
+"No; I can only see where he was different from you."
+
+But he felt she had a grudge against him.
+
+One evening, as they were coming home over the fields,
+she startled him by asking:
+
+"Do you think it's worth it--the--the sex part?"
+
+"The act of loving, itself?"
+
+"Yes; is it worth anything to you?"
+
+"But how can you separate it?" he said.  "It's the culmination
+of everything.  All our intimacy culminates then."
+
+"Not for me," she said.
+
+He was silent.  A flash of hate for her came up.  After all,
+she was dissatisfied with him, even there, where he thought they
+fulfilled each other.  But he believed her too implicitly.
+
+"I feel," she continued slowly, "as if I hadn't got you,
+as if all of you weren't there, and as if it weren't ME you were taking---"
+
+"Who, then?"
+
+"Something just for yourself.  It has been fine, so that I
+daren't think of it.  But is it ME you want, or is it IT?"
+
+He again felt guilty.  Did he leave Clara out of count,
+and take simply women?  But he thought that was splitting a hair.
+
+"When I had Baxter, actually had him, then I DID feel as if I
+had all of him," she said.
+
+"And it was better?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, yes; it was more whole.  I don't say you haven't given
+me more than he ever gave me."
+
+"Or could give you."
+
+"Yes, perhaps; but you've never given me yourself."
+
+He knitted his brows angrily.
+
+"If I start to make love to you," he said, "I just go like
+a leaf down the wind."
+
+"And leave me out of count," she said.
+
+"And then is it nothing to you?" he asked, almost rigid
+with chagrin.
+
+"It's something; and sometimes you have carried me away--right
+away--I know--and--I reverence you for it--but---"
+
+"Don't 'but' me," he said, kissing her quickly, as a fire ran
+through him.
+
+She submitted, and was silent.
+
+It was true as he said.  As a rule, when he started love-making,
+the emotion was strong enough to carry with it everything--reason, soul,
+blood--in a great sweep, like the Trent carries bodily its back-swirls
+and intertwinings, noiselessly.  Gradually the little criticisms,
+the little sensations, were lost, thought also went, everything borne
+along in one flood.  He became, not a man with a mind, but a
+great instinct.  His hands were like creatures, living; his limbs,
+his body, were all life and consciousness, subject to no will of his,
+but living in themselves.  Just as he was, so it seemed the vigorous,
+wintry stars were strong also with life.  He and they struck with
+the same pulse of fire, and the same joy of strength which held
+the bracken-frond stiff near his eyes held his own body firm. 
+It was as if he, and the stars, and the dark herbage, and Clara
+were licked up in an immense tongue of flame, which tore onwards
+and upwards.  Everything rushed along in living beside him;
+everything was still, perfect in itself, along with him. 
+This wonderful stillness in each thing in itself, while it was being
+borne along in a very ecstasy of living, seemed the highest point
+of bliss.
+
+And Clara knew this held him to her, so she trusted altogether
+to the passion.  It, however, failed her very often.  They did
+not often reach again the height of that once when the peewits
+had called.  Gradually, some mechanical effort spoilt their loving,
+or, when they had splendid moments, they had them separately,
+and not so satisfactorily.  So often he seemed merely to be running
+on alone; often they realised it had been a failure, not what they
+had wanted.  He left her, knowing THAT evening had only made
+a little split between them.  Their loving grew more mechanical,
+without the marvellous glamour.  Gradually they began to introduce
+novelties, to get back some of the feeling of satisfaction. 
+They would be very near, almost dangerously near to the river,
+so that the black water ran not far from his face, and it gave
+a little thrill; or they loved sometimes in a little hollow below
+the fence of the path where people were passing occasionally,
+on the edge of the town, and they heard footsteps coming, almost felt
+the vibration of the tread, and they heard what the passersby
+said--strange little things that were never intended to be heard. 
+And afterwards each of them was rather ashamed, and these things
+caused a distance between the two of them.  He began to despise her
+a little, as if she had merited it!
+
+One night he left her to go to Daybrook Station over the fields. 
+It was very dark, with an attempt at snow, although the spring
+was so far advanced.  Morel had not much time; he plunged forward. 
+The town ceases almost abruptly on the edge of a steep hollow; there the
+houses with their yellow lights stand up against the darkness.  He went
+over the stile, and dropped quickly into the hollow of the fields. 
+Under the orchard one warm window shone in Swineshead Farm. 
+Paul glanced round.  Behind, the houses stood on the brim of the dip,
+black against the sky, like wild beasts glaring curiously with
+yellow eyes down into the darkness.  It was the town that seemed
+savage and uncouth, glaring on the clouds at the back of him. 
+Some creature stirred under the willows of the farm pond.  It was too
+dark to distinguish anything.
+
+He was close up to the next stile before he saw a dark shape
+leaning against it.  The man moved aside.
+
+"Good-evening!" he said.
+
+"Good-evening!" Morel answered, not noticing.
+
+"Paul Morel?" said the man.
+
+Then he knew it was Dawes.  The man stopped his way.
+
+"I've got yer, have I?" he said awkwardly.
+
+"I shall miss my train," said Paul.
+
+He could see nothing of Dawes's face.  The man's teeth seemed
+to chatter as he talked.
+
+"You're going to get it from me now," said Dawes.
+
+Morel attempted to move forward; the other man stepped in front
+of him.
+
+"Are yer goin' to take that top-coat off," he said, "or are
+you goin' to lie down to it?"
+
+Paul was afraid the man was mad.
+
+"But," he said, "I don't know how to fight."
+
+"All right, then," answered Dawes, and before the younger man
+knew where he was, he was staggering backwards from a blow across
+the face.
+
+The whole night went black.  He tore off his overcoat and coat,
+dodging a blow, and flung the garments over Dawes.  The latter
+swore savagely.  Morel, in his shirt-sleeves, was now alert and
+furious.  He felt his whole body unsheath itself like a claw. 
+He could not fight, so he would use his wits.  The other man became
+more distinct to him; he could see particularly the shirt-breast.
+Dawes stumbled over Paul's coats, then came rushing forward.  
+The young man's mouth was bleeding.  It was the other man's mouth 
+he was dying to get at, and the desire was anguish in its strength. 
+He stepped quickly through the stile, and as Dawes was coming through
+after him, like a flash he got a blow in over the other's mouth. 
+He shivered with pleasure.  Dawes advanced slowly, spitting.  Paul
+was afraid; he moved round to get to the stile again.  Suddenly, from
+out of nowhere, came a great blow against his ear, that sent him
+falling helpless backwards.  He heard Dawes's heavy panting,
+like a wild beast's, then came a kick on the knee, giving him
+such agony that he got up and, quite blind, leapt clean under his
+enemy's guard.  He felt blows and kicks, but they did not hurt. 
+He hung on to the bigger man like a wild cat, till at last Dawes fell
+with a crash, losing his presence of mind.  Paul went down with him. 
+Pure instinct brought his hands to the man's neck, and before Dawes,
+in frenzy and agony, could wrench him free, he had got his fists
+twisted in the scarf and his knuckles dug in the throat of the
+other man.  He was a pure instinct, without reason or feeling. 
+His body, hard and wonderful in itself, cleaved against the
+struggling body of the other man; not a muscle in him relaxed. 
+He was quite unconscious, only his body had taken upon itself to kill
+this other man.  For himself, he had neither feeling nor reason. 
+He lay pressed hard against his adversary, his body adjusting itself
+to its one pure purpose of choking the other man, resisting exactly
+at the right moment, with exactly the right amount of strength,
+the struggles of the other, silent, intent, unchanging, gradually
+pressing its knuckles deeper, feeling the struggles of the other
+body become wilder and more frenzied.  Tighter and tighter grew
+his body, like a screw that is gradually increasing in pressure,
+till something breaks.
+
+Then suddenly he relaxed, full of wonder and misgiving. 
+Dawes had been yielding.  Morel felt his body flame with pain,
+as he realised what he was doing; he was all bewildered. 
+Dawes's struggles suddenly renewed themselves in a furious spasm. 
+Paul's hands were wrenched, torn out of the scarf in which they
+were knotted, and he was flung away, helpless.  He heard the horrid
+sound of the other's gasping, but he lay stunned; then, still dazed,
+he felt the blows of the other's feet, and lost consciousness.
+
+Dawes, grunting with pain like a beast, was kicking the prostrate
+body of his rival.  Suddenly the whistle of the train shrieked
+two fields away.  He turned round and glared suspiciously. 
+What was coming?  He saw the lights of the train draw across his vision. 
+It seemed to him people were approaching.  He made off across the
+field into Nottingham, and dimly in his consciousness as he went,
+he felt on his foot the place where his boot had knocked against
+one of the lad's bones.  The knock seemed to re-echo inside him;
+he hurried to get away from it.
+
+Morel gradually came to himself.  He knew where he was and
+what had happened, but he did not want to move.  He lay still,
+with tiny bits of snow tickling his face.  It was pleasant
+to lie quite, quite still.  The time passed.  It was the bits
+of snow that kept rousing him when he did not want to be roused. 
+At last his will clicked into action.
+
+"I mustn't lie here," he said; "it's silly."
+
+But still he did not move.
+
+"I said I was going to get up," he repeated.  "Why don't I?"
+
+And still it was some time before he had sufficiently pulled
+himself together to stir; then gradually he got up.  Pain made him
+sick and dazed, but his brain was clear.  Reeling, he groped for
+his coats and got them on, buttoning his overcoat up to his ears. 
+It was some time before he found his cap.  He did not know whether his
+face was still bleeding.  Walking blindly, every step making him sick
+with pain, he went back to the pond and washed his face and hands. 
+The icy water hurt, but helped to bring him back to himself. 
+He crawled back up the hill to the tram.  He wanted to get to his
+mother--he must get to his mother--that was his blind intention. 
+He covered his face as much as he could, and struggled sickly along. 
+Continually the ground seemed to fall away from him as he walked,
+and he felt himself dropping with a sickening feeling into space; so,
+like a nightmare, he got through with the journey home.
+
+Everybody was in bed.  He looked at himself.  His face was
+discoloured and smeared with blood, almost like a dead man's face. 
+He washed it, and went to bed.  The night went by in delirium. 
+In the morning he found his mother looking at him.  Her blue eyes--they
+were all he wanted to see.  She was there; he was in her hands.
+
+"It's not much, mother," he said.  "It was Baxter Dawes."
+
+"Tell me where it hurts you," she said quietly.
+
+"I don't know--my shoulder.  Say it was a bicycle accident, mother."
+
+He could not move his arm.  Presently Minnie, the little servant,
+came upstairs with some tea.
+
+"Your mother's nearly frightened me out of my wits--fainted away,"
+she said.
+
+He felt he could not bear it.  His mother nursed him; he told
+her about it.
+
+"And now I should have done with them all," she said quietly.
+
+"I will, mother."
+
+She covered him up.
+
+"And don't think about it," she said--"only try to go to sleep. 
+The doctor won't be here till eleven."
+
+He had a dislocated shoulder, and the second day acute bronchitis
+set in.  His mother was pale as death now, and very thin.  She would
+sit and look at him, then away into space.  There was something
+between them that neither dared mention.  Clara came to see him. 
+Afterwards he said to his mother:
+
+"She makes me tired, mother."
+
+"Yes; I wish she wouldn't come," Mrs. Morel replied.
+
+Another day Miriam came, but she seemed almost like a stranger
+to him.
+
+"You know, I don't care about them, mother," he said.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't, my son," she replied sadly.
+
+It was given out everywhere that it was a bicycle accident. 
+Soon he was able to go to work again, but now there was a constant
+sickness and gnawing at his heart.  He went to Clara, but there seemed,
+as it were, nobody there.  He could not work.  He and his mother
+seemed almost to avoid each other.  There was some secret between
+them which they could not bear.  He was not aware of it.  He only
+knew that his life seemed unbalanced, as if it were going to smash
+into pieces.
+
+Clara did not know what was the matter with him. 
+She realised that he seemed unaware of her.  Even when he came
+to her he seemed unaware of her; always he was somewhere else. 
+She felt she was clutching for him, and he was somewhere else. 
+It tortured her, and so she tortured him.  For a month at a time
+she kept him at arm's length.  He almost hated her, and was driven
+to her in spite of himself.  He went mostly into the company of men,
+was always at the George or the White Horse.  His mother was ill,
+distant, quiet, shadowy.  He was terrified of something; he dared
+not look at her.  Her eyes seemed to grow darker, her face more waxen;
+still she dragged about at her work.
+
+At Whitsuntide he said he would go to Blackpool for four
+days with his friend Newton.  The latter was a big, jolly fellow,
+with a touch of the bounder about him.  Paul said his mother must go
+to Sheffield to stay a week with Annie, who lived there.  Perhaps the
+change would do her good.  Mrs. Morel was attending a woman's doctor
+in Nottingham.  He said her heart and her digestion were wrong. 
+She consented to go to Sheffield, though she did not want to;
+but now she would do everything her son wished of her.  Paul said
+he would come for her on the fifth day, and stay also in Sheffield
+till the holiday was up.  It was agreed.
+
+The two young men set off gaily for Blackpool.  Mrs. Morel was
+quite lively as Paul kissed her and left her.  Once at the station,
+he forgot everything.  Four days were clear--not an anxiety,
+not a thought.  The two young men simply enjoyed themselves. 
+Paul was like another man.  None of himself remained--no Clara,
+no Miriam, no mother that fretted him.  He wrote to them all,
+and long letters to his mother; but they were jolly letters that
+made her laugh.  He was having a good time, as young fellows will
+in a place like Blackpool.  And underneath it all was a shadow
+for her.
+
+Paul was very gay, excited at the thought of staying with his
+mother in Sheffield.  Newton was to spend the day with them. 
+Their train was late.  Joking, laughing, with their pipes between
+their teeth, the young men swung their bags on to the tram-car.  Paul
+had bought his mother a little collar of real lace that he wanted
+to see her wear, so that he could tease her about it.
+
+Annie lived in a nice house, and had a little maid.  Paul ran
+gaily up the steps.  He expected his mother laughing in the hall,
+but it was Annie who opened to him.  She seemed distant to him. 
+He stood a second in dismay.  Annie let him kiss her cheek.
+
+"Is my mother ill?" he said.
+
+"Yes; she's not very well.  Don't upset her."
+
+"Is she in bed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And then the queer feeling went over him, as if all the sunshine
+had gone out of him, and it was all shadow.  He dropped the bag
+and ran upstairs.  Hesitating, he opened the door.  His mother
+sat up in bed, wearing a dressing-gown of old-rose colour. 
+She looked at him almost as if she were ashamed of herself,
+pleading to him, humble.  He saw the ashy look about her.
+
+"Mother!" he said.
+
+"I thought you were never coming," she answered gaily.
+
+But he only fell on his knees at the bedside, and buried
+his face in the bedclothes, crying in agony, and saying:
+
+"Mother--mother--mother!"
+
+She stroked his hair slowly with her thin hand.
+
+"Don't cry," she said.  "Don't cry--it's nothing."
+
+But he felt as if his blood was melting into tears, and he
+cried in terror and pain.
+
+"Don't--don't cry," his mother faltered.
+
+Slowly she stroked his hair.  Shocked out of himself, he cried,
+and the tears hurt in every fibre of his body.  Suddenly he stopped,
+but he dared not lift his face out of the bedclothes.
+
+"You ARE late.  Where have you been?" his mother asked.
+
+"The train was late," he replied, muffled in the sheet.
+
+"Yes; that miserable Central!  Is Newton come?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm sure you must be hungry, and they've kept dinner waiting."
+
+With a wrench he looked up at her.
+
+"What is it, mother?" he asked brutally.
+
+She averted her eyes as she answered:
+
+"Only a bit of a tumour, my boy.  You needn't trouble. 
+It's been there--the lump has--a long time."
+
+Up came the tears again.  His mind was clear and hard,
+but his body was crying.
+
+"Where?" he said.
+
+She put her hand on her side.
+
+"Here.  But you know they can sweal a tumour away."
+
+He stood feeling dazed and helpless, like a child.  He thought
+perhaps it was as she said.  Yes; he reassured himself it was so. 
+But all the while his blood and his body knew definitely what it was. 
+He sat down on the bed, and took her hand.  She had never had but the
+one ring--her wedding-ring.
+
+"When were you poorly?" he asked.
+
+"It was yesterday it began," she answered submissively.
+
+"Pains?"
+
+"Yes; but not more than I've often had at home.  I believe
+Dr. Ansell is an alarmist."
+
+"You ought not to have travelled alone," he said, to himself
+more than to her.
+
+"As if that had anything to do with it!" she answered quickly.
+
+They were silent for a while.
+
+"Now go and have your dinner," she said.  "You MUST be hungry."
+
+"Have you had yours?"
+
+"Yes; a beautiful sole I had.  Annie IS good to me."
+
+They talked a little while, then he went downstairs. 
+He was very white and strained.  Newton sat in miserable sympathy.
+
+After dinner he went into the scullery to help Annie to wash up. 
+The little maid had gone on an errand.
+
+"Is it really a tumour?" he asked.
+
+Annie began to cry again.
+
+"The pain she had yesterday--I never saw anybody suffer like it!"
+she cried.  "Leonard ran like a madman for Dr. Ansell, and when she'd
+got to bed she said to me:  'Annie, look at this lump on my side. 
+I wonder what it is?'  And there I looked, and I thought I should
+have dropped.  Paul, as true as I'm here, it's a lump as big as my
+double fist.  I said:  'Good gracious, mother, whenever did that come?' 
+'Why, child,' she said, 'it's been there a long time.'  I thought I
+should have died, our Paul, I did.  She's been having these pains
+for months at home, and nobody looking after her."
+
+The tears came to his eyes, then dried suddenly.
+
+"But she's been attending the doctor in Nottingham--and she
+never told me," he said.
+
+"If I'd have been at home," said Annie, "I should have seen
+for myself."
+
+He felt like a man walking in unrealities.  In the afternoon
+he went to see the doctor.  The latter was a shrewd, lovable man.
+
+"But what is it?" he said.
+
+The doctor looked at the young man, then knitted his fingers.
+
+"It may be a large tumour which has formed in the membrane,"
+he said slowly, "and which we MAY be able to make go away."
+
+"Can't you operate?" asked Paul.
+
+"Not there," replied the doctor.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"QUITE!"
+
+Paul meditated a while.
+
+"Are you sure it's a tumour?" he asked.  "Why did Dr. Jameson
+in Nottingham never find out anything about it?  She's been going
+to him for weeks, and he's treated her for heart and indigestion."
+
+"Mrs. Morel never told Dr. Jameson about the lump," said the doctor.
+
+"And do you KNOW it's a tumour?"
+
+"No, I am not sure."
+
+"What else MIGHT it be?  You asked my sister if there was
+cancer in the family.  Might it be cancer?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And what shall you do?"
+
+"I should like an examination, with Dr. Jameson."
+
+"Then have one."
+
+"You must arrange about that.  His fee wouldn't be less than
+ten guineas to come here from Nottingham."
+
+"When would you like him to come?"
+
+"I will call in this evening, and we will talk it over."
+
+Paul went away, biting his lip.
+
+His mother could come downstairs for tea, the doctor said. 
+Her son went upstairs to help her.  She wore the old-rose dressing-gown
+that Leonard had given Annie, and, with a little colour in her face,
+was quite young again.
+
+"But you look quite pretty in that," he said.
+
+"Yes; they make me so fine, I hardly know myself," she answered.
+
+But when she stood up to walk, the colour went.  Paul helped her,
+half-carrying her.  At the top of the stairs she was gone.  He lifted
+her up and carried her quickly downstairs; laid her on the couch. 
+She was light and frail.  Her face looked as if she were dead,
+with blue lips shut tight.  Her eyes opened--her blue, unfailing eyes--
+and she looked at him pleadingly, almost wanting him to forgive her. 
+He held brandy to her lips, but her mouth would not open. 
+All the time she watched him lovingly.  She was only sorry for him. 
+The tears ran down his face without ceasing, but not a muscle moved. 
+He was intent on getting a little brandy between her lips.
+Soon she was able to swallow a teaspoonful.  She lay back, so tired. 
+The tears continued to run down his face.
+
+"But," she panted, "it'll go off.  Don't cry!"
+
+"I'm not doing," he said.
+
+After a while she was better again.  He was kneeling beside
+the couch.  They looked into each other's eyes.
+
+"I don't want you to make a trouble of it," she said.
+
+"No, mother.  You'll have to be quite still, and then you'll
+get better soon."
+
+But he was white to the lips, and their eyes as they looked
+at each other understood.  Her eyes were so blue--such a wonderful
+forget-me-not blue!  He felt if only they had been of a different
+colour he could have borne it better.  His heart seemed to be
+ripping slowly in his breast.  He kneeled there, holding her hand,
+and neither said anything.  Then Annie came in.
+
+"Are you all right?" she murmured timidly to her mother.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Morel.
+
+Paul sat down and told her about Blackpool.  She was curious.
+
+A day or two after, he went to see Dr. Jameson in Nottingham,
+to arrange for a consultation.  Paul had practically no money in
+the world.  But he could borrow.
+
+His mother had been used to go to the public consultation on
+Saturday morning, when she could see the doctor for only a nominal sum. 
+Her son went on the same day.  The waiting-room was full of poor women,
+who sat patiently on a bench around the wall.  Paul thought of
+his mother, in her little black costume, sitting waiting likewise. 
+The doctor was late.  The women all looked rather frightened. 
+Paul asked the nurse in attendance if he could see the doctor
+immediately he came.  It was arranged so.  The women sitting
+patiently round the walls of the room eyed the young man curiously.
+
+At last the doctor came.  He was about forty,
+good-looking, brown-skinned.  His wife had died, and he,
+who had loved her, had specialised on women's ailments. 
+Paul told his name and his mother's.  The doctor did not remember.
+
+"Number forty-six M.," said the nurse; and the doctor looked
+up the case in his book.
+
+"There is a big lump that may be a tumour," said Paul. 
+"But Dr. Ansell was going to write you a letter."
+
+"Ah, yes!" replied the doctor, drawing the letter from
+his pocket.  He was very friendly, affable, busy, kind.  He would
+come to Sheffield the next day.
+
+"What is your father?" he asked.
+
+"He is a coal-miner," replied Paul.
+
+"Not very well off, I suppose?"
+
+"This--I see after this," said Paul.
+
+"And you?" smiled the doctor.
+
+"I am a clerk in Jordan's Appliance Factory."
+
+The doctor smiled at him.
+
+"Er--to go to Sheffield!" he said, putting the tips of his
+fingers together, and smiling with his eyes.  "Eight guineas?"
+
+"Thank you!" said Paul, flushing and rising.  "And you'll
+come to-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow--Sunday?  Yes!  Can you tell me about what time there
+is a train in the afternoon?"
+
+"There is a Central gets in at four-fifteen."
+
+"And will there be any way of getting up to the house? 
+Shall I have to walk?"  The doctor smiled.
+
+"There is the tram," said Paul; "the Western Park tram."
+
+The doctor made a note of it.
+
+"Thank you!" he said, and shook hands.
+
+Then Paul went on home to see his father, who was left in
+the charge of Minnie.  Walter Morel was getting very grey now. 
+Paul found him digging in the garden.  He had written him a letter. 
+He shook hands with his father.
+
+"Hello, son!  Tha has landed, then?" said the father.
+
+"Yes," replied the son.  "But I'm going back to-night."
+
+"Are ter, beguy!" exclaimed the collier.  "An' has ter eaten owt?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That's just like thee," said Morel.  "Come thy ways in."
+
+The father was afraid of the mention of his wife.  The two
+went indoors.  Paul ate in silence; his father, with earthy hands,
+and sleeves rolled up, sat in the arm-chair opposite and looked
+at him.
+
+"Well, an' how is she?" asked the miner at length, in a little voice.
+
+"She can sit up; she can be carried down for tea," said Paul.
+
+"That's a blessin'!" exclaimed Morel.  "I hope we s'll soon
+be havin' her whoam, then.  An' what's that Nottingham doctor say?"
+
+"He's going to-morrow to have an examination of her."
+
+"Is he beguy!  That's a tidy penny, I'm thinkin'!"
+
+"Eight guineas."
+
+"Eight guineas!" the miner spoke breathlessly.  "Well, we mun
+find it from somewhere."
+
+"I can pay that," said Paul.
+
+There was silence between them for some time.
+
+"She says she hopes you're getting on all right with Minnie,"
+Paul said.
+
+"Yes, I'm all right, an' I wish as she was," answered Morel. 
+"But Minnie's a good little wench, bless 'er heart!"  He sat
+looking dismal.
+
+"I s'll have to be going at half-past three," said Paul.
+
+"It's a trapse for thee, lad!  Eight guineas!  An' when dost
+think she'll be able to get as far as this?"
+
+"We must see what the doctors say to-morrow," Paul said.
+
+Morel sighed deeply.  The house seemed strangely empty,
+and Paul thought his father looked lost, forlorn, and old.
+
+"You'll have to go and see her next week, father," he said.
+
+"I hope she'll be a-whoam by that time," said Morel.
+
+"If she's not," said Paul, "then you must come."
+
+"I dunno wheer I s'll find th' money," said Morel.
+
+"And I'll write to you what the doctor says," said Paul.
+
+"But tha writes i' such a fashion, I canna ma'e it out,"
+said Morel.
+
+"Well, I'll write plain."
+
+It was no good asking Morel to answer, for he could scarcely
+do more than write his own name.
+
+The doctor came.  Leonard felt it his duty to meet him with a cab. 
+The examination did not take long.  Annie, Arthur, Paul, and Leonard
+were waiting in the parlour anxiously.  The doctors came down. 
+Paul glanced at them.  He had never had any hope, except when he had
+deceived himself.
+
+"It MAY be a tumour; we must wait and see," said Dr. Jameson.
+
+"And if it is," said Annie, "can you sweal it away?"
+
+"Probably," said the doctor.
+
+Paul put eight sovereigns and half a sovereign on the table. 
+The doctor counted them, took a florin out of his purse, and put
+that down.
+
+"Thank you!" he said.  "I'm sorry Mrs. Morel is so ill. 
+But we must see what we can do."
+
+"There can't be an operation?" said Paul.
+
+The doctor shook his head.
+
+"No," he said; "and even if there could, her heart wouldn't
+stand it."
+
+"Is her heart risky?" asked Paul.
+
+"Yes; you must be careful with her."
+
+"Very risky?"
+
+"No--er--no, no!  Just take care."
+
+And the doctor was gone.
+
+Then Paul carried his mother downstairs.  She lay simply,
+like a child.  But when he was on the stairs, she put her arms round
+his neck, clinging.
+
+"I'm so frightened of these beastly stairs," she said.
+
+And he was frightened, too.  He would let Leonard do it
+another time.  He felt he could not carry her.
+
+"He thinks it's only a tumour!" cried Annie to her mother. 
+"And he can sweal it away."
+
+"I KNEW he could," protested Mrs. Morel scornfully.
+
+She pretended not to notice that Paul had gone out of the room. 
+He sat in the kitchen, smoking.  Then he tried to brush some grey ash
+off his coat.  He looked again.  It was one of his mother's grey hairs. 
+It was so long!  He held it up, and it drifted into the chimney. 
+He let go.  The long grey hair floated and was gone in the blackness
+of the chimney.
+
+The next day he kissed her before going back to work. 
+It was very early in the morning, and they were alone.
+
+"You won't fret, my boy!" she said.
+
+"No, mother."
+
+"No; it would be silly.  And take care of yourself."
+
+"Yes," he answered.  Then, after a while:  "And I shall come
+next Saturday, and shall bring my father?"
+
+"I suppose he wants to come," she replied.  "At any rate,
+if he does you'll have to let him."
+
+He kissed her again, and stroked the hair from her temples,
+gently, tenderly, as if she were a lover.
+
+"Shan't you be late?" she murmured.
+
+"I'm going," he said, very low.
+
+Still he sat a few minutes, stroking the brown and grey hair
+from her temples.
+
+"And you won't be any worse, mother?"
+
+"No, my son."
+
+"You promise me?"
+
+"Yes; I won't be any worse."
+
+He kissed her, held her in his arms for a moment, and was gone. 
+In the early sunny morning he ran to the station, crying all the way;
+he did not know what for.  And her blue eyes were wide and staring
+as she thought of him.
+
+In the afternoon he went a walk with Clara.  They sat
+in the little wood where bluebells were standing.  He took her hand.
+
+"You'll see," he said to Clara, "she'll never be better."
+
+"Oh, you don't know!" replied the other.
+
+"I do," he said.
+
+She caught him impulsively to her breast.
+
+"Try and forget it, dear," she said; "try and forget it."
+
+"I will," he answered.
+
+Her breast was there, warm for him; her hands were in his hair. 
+It was comforting, and he held his arms round her.  But he did
+not forget.  He only talked to Clara of something else.  And it
+was always so.  When she felt it coming, the agony, she cried
+to him:
+
+"Don't think of it, Paul!  Don't think of it, my darling!"
+
+And she pressed him to her breast, rocked him, soothed him
+like a child.  So he put the trouble aside for her sake, to take it
+up again immediately he was alone.  All the time, as he went about,
+he cried mechanically.  His mind and hands were busy.  He cried,
+he did not know why.  It was his blood weeping.  He was just as much
+alone whether he was with Clara or with the men in the White Horse. 
+Just himself and this pressure inside him, that was all that existed. 
+He read sometimes.  He had to keep his mind occupied.  And Clara was a
+way of occupying his mind.
+
+On the Saturday Walter Morel went to Sheffield.  He was
+a forlorn figure, looking rather as if nobody owned him. 
+Paul ran upstairs.
+
+"My father's come," he said, kissing his mother.
+
+"Has he?" she answered wearily.
+
+The old collier came rather frightened into the bedroom.
+
+"How dun I find thee, lass?" he said, going forward and kissing
+her in a hasty, timid fashion.
+
+"Well, I'm middlin'," she replied.
+
+"I see tha art," he said.  He stood looking down on her. 
+Then he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief.  Helpless, and as if
+nobody owned him, he looked.
+
+"Have you gone on all right?" asked the wife, rather wearily,
+as if it were an effort to talk to him.
+
+"Yis," he answered.  "'Er's a bit behint-hand now and again, as
+yer might expect."
+
+"Does she have your dinner ready?" asked Mrs. Morel.
+
+"Well, I've 'ad to shout at 'er once or twice," he said.
+
+"And you MUST shout at her if she's not ready.  She WILL leave
+things to the last minute."
+
+She gave him a few instructions.  He sat looking at her as
+if she were almost a stranger to him, before whom he was awkward
+and humble, and also as if he had lost his presence of mind,
+and wanted to run.  This feeling that he wanted to run away,
+that he was on thorns to be gone from so trying a situation, and yet
+must linger because it looked better, made his presence so trying. 
+He put up his eyebrows for misery, and clenched his fists on his knees,
+feeling so awkward in presence of big trouble.
+
+Mrs. Morel did not change much.  She stayed in Sheffield
+for two months.  If anything, at the end she was rather worse. 
+But she wanted to go home.  Annie had her children.  Mrs. Morel
+wanted to go home.  So they got a motor-car from Nottingham--for she
+was too ill to go by train--and she was driven through the sunshine. 
+It was just August; everything was bright and warm.  Under the blue
+sky they could all see she was dying.  Yet she was jollier than she
+had been for weeks.  They all laughed and talked.
+
+"Annie," she exclaimed, "I saw a lizard dart on that rock!"
+
+Her eyes were so quick; she was still so full of life.
+
+Morel knew she was coming.  He had the front door open. 
+Everybody was on tiptoe.  Half the street turned out.  They heard
+the sound of the great motor-car.  Mrs. Morel, smiling, drove home
+down the street.
+
+"And just look at them all come out to see me!" she said. 
+"But there, I suppose I should have done the same.  How do you do,
+Mrs. Mathews?  How are you, Mrs. Harrison?"
+
+They none of them could hear, but they saw her smile and nod. 
+And they all saw death on her face, they said.  It was a great event
+in the street.
+
+Morel wanted to carry her indoors, but he was too old. 
+Arthur took her as if she were a child.  They had set her a big,
+deep chair by the hearth where her rocking-chair used to stand. 
+When she was unwrapped and seated, and had drunk a little brandy,
+she looked round the room.
+
+"Don't think I don't like your house, Annie," she said;
+"but it's nice to be in my own home again."
+
+And Morel answered huskily:
+
+"It is, lass, it is."
+
+And Minnie, the little quaint maid, said:
+
+"An' we glad t' 'ave yer."
+
+There was a lovely yellow ravel of sunflowers in the garden. 
+She looked out of the window.
+
+"There are my sunflowers!" she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE RELEASE
+
+"By the way," said Dr. Ansell one evening when Morel was
+in Sheffield, "we've got a man in the fever hospital here who comes
+from Nottingham--Dawes.  He doesn't seem to have many belongings
+in this world."
+
+"Baxter Dawes!"  Paul exclaimed.
+
+"That's the man--has been a fine fellow, physically, I should think. 
+Been in a bit of a mess lately.  You know him?"
+
+"He used to work at the place where I am."
+
+"Did he?  Do you know anything about him?  He's just sulking,
+or he'd be a lot better than he is by now."
+
+"I don't know anything of his home circumstances, except that
+he's separated from his wife and has been a bit down, I believe. 
+But tell him about me, will you?  Tell him I'll come and see him."
+
+The next time Morel saw the doctor he said:
+
+"And what about Dawes?"
+
+"I said to him," answered the other, "'Do you know a man from
+Nottingham named Morel?' and he looked at me as if he'd jump at
+my throat.  So I said:  'I see you know the name; it's Paul Morel.' 
+Then I told him about your saying you would go and see him. 
+'What does he want?' he said, as if you were a policeman."
+
+"And did he say he would see me?" asked Paul.
+
+"He wouldn't say anything--good, bad or indifferent,"
+replied the doctor.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's what I want to know.  There he lies and sulks, day in,
+day out.  Can't get a word of information out of him."
+
+"Do you think I might go?" asked Paul.
+
+"You might."
+
+There was a feeling of connection between the rival men,
+more than ever since they had fought.  In a way Morel felt guilty
+towards the other, and more or less responsible.  And being in such
+a state of soul himself, he felt an almost painful nearness to Dawes,
+who was suffering and despairing, too.  Besides, they had met
+in a naked extremity of hate, and it was a bond.  At any rate,
+the elemental man in each had met.
+
+He went down to the isolation hospital, with Dr. Ansell's card. 
+This sister, a healthy young Irishwoman, led him down the ward.
+
+"A visitor to see you, Jim Crow," she said.
+
+Dawes turned over suddenly with a startled grunt.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Caw!" she mocked.  "He can only say 'Caw!'  I have brought you
+a gentleman to see you.  Now say 'Thank you,' and show some manners."
+
+Dawes looked swiftly with his dark, startled eyes beyond the sister
+at Paul.  His look was full of fear, mistrust, hate, and misery. 
+Morel met the swift, dark eyes, and hesitated.  The two men were
+afraid of the naked selves they had been.
+
+"Dr. Ansell told me you were here," said Morel, holding out
+his hand.
+
+Dawes mechanically shook hands.
+
+"So I thought I'd come in," continued Paul.
+
+There was no answer.  Dawes lay staring at the opposite wall.
+
+"Say 'Caw!"' mocked the nurse.  "Say 'Caw!'  Jim Crow."
+
+"He is getting on all right?" said Paul to her.
+
+"Oh yes!  He lies and imagines he's going to die," said the nurse,
+"and it frightens every word out of his mouth."
+
+"And you MUST have somebody to talk to," laughed Morel.
+
+"That's it!" laughed the nurse.  "Only two old men and a boy
+who always cries.  It is hard lines!  Here am I dying to hear Jim
+Crow's voice, and nothing but an odd 'Caw!' will he give!"
+
+"So rough on you!" said Morel.
+
+"Isn't it?" said the nurse.
+
+"I suppose I am a godsend," he laughed.
+
+"Oh, dropped straight from heaven!" laughed the nurse.
+
+Presently she left the two men alone.  Dawes was thinner,
+and handsome again, but life seemed low in him.  As the doctor said,
+he was lying sulking, and would not move forward towards convalescence.
+He seemed to grudge every beat of his heart.
+
+"Have you had a bad time?" asked Paul.
+
+Suddenly again Dawes looked at him.
+
+"What are you doing in Sheffield?" he asked.
+
+"My mother was taken ill at my sister's in Thurston Street. 
+What are you doing here?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"How long have you been in?"  Morel asked.
+
+"I couldn't say for sure," Dawes answered grudgingly.
+
+He lay staring across at the wall opposite, as if trying to
+believe Morel was not there.  Paul felt his heart go hard and angry.
+
+"Dr. Ansell told me you were here," he said coldly.
+
+The other man did not answer.
+
+"Typhoid's pretty bad, I know," Morel persisted.
+
+Suddenly Dawes said:
+
+"What did you come for?"
+
+"Because Dr. Ansell said you didn't know anybody here. 
+Do you?"
+
+"I know nobody nowhere," said Dawes.
+
+"Well," said Paul, "it's because you don't choose to, then."
+
+There was another silence.
+
+"We s'll be taking my mother home as soon as we can,"
+said Paul.
+
+"What's a-matter with her?" asked Dawes, with a sick man's
+interest in illness.
+
+"She's got a cancer."
+
+There was another silence.
+
+"But we want to get her home," said Paul.  "We s'll have to get
+a motor-car."
+
+Dawes lay thinking.
+
+"Why don't you ask Thomas Jordan to lend you his?" said Dawes.
+
+"It's not big enough," Morel answered.
+
+Dawes blinked his dark eyes as he lay thinking.
+
+"Then ask Jack Pilkington; he'd lend it you.  You know him."
+
+"I think I s'll hire one," said Paul.
+
+"You're a fool if you do," said Dawes.
+
+The sick man was gaunt and handsome again.  Paul was sorry
+for him because his eyes looked so tired.
+
+"Did you get a job here?" he asked.
+
+"I was only here a day or two before I was taken bad,"
+Dawes replied.
+
+"You want to get in a convalescent home," said Paul.
+
+The other's face clouded again.
+
+"I'm goin' in no convalescent home," he said.
+
+"My father's been in the one at Seathorpe, an' he liked it. 
+Dr. Ansell would get you a recommend."
+
+Dawes lay thinking.  It was evident he dared not face
+the world again.
+
+"The seaside would be all right just now," Morel said. 
+"Sun on those sandhills, and the waves not far out."
+
+The other did not answer.
+
+"By Gad!"  Paul concluded, too miserable to bother much;
+"it's all right when you know you're going to walk again, and swim!"
+
+Dawes glanced at him quickly.  The man's dark eyes were
+afraid to meet any other eyes in the world.  But the real misery
+and helplessness in Paul's tone gave him a feeling of relief.
+
+"Is she far gone?" he asked.
+
+"She's going like wax," Paul answered; "but cheerful--lively!"
+
+He bit his lip.  After a minute he rose.
+
+"Well, I'll be going," he said.  "I'll leave you this half-crown."
+
+"I don't want it," Dawes muttered.
+
+Morel did not answer, but left the coin on the table.
+
+"Well," he said, "I'll try and run in when I'm back in Sheffield. 
+Happen you might like to see my brother-in-law?  He works in Pyecrofts."
+
+"I don't know him," said Dawes.
+
+"He's all right.  Should I tell him to come?  He might bring
+you some papers to look at."
+
+The other man did not answer.  Paul went.  The strong emotion
+that Dawes aroused in him, repressed, made him shiver.
+
+He did not tell his mother, but next day he spoke to Clara
+about this interview.  It was in the dinner-hour.  The two did
+not often go out together now, but this day he asked her to go
+with him to the Castle grounds.  There they sat while the scarlet
+geraniums and the yellow calceolarias blazed in the sunlight. 
+She was now always rather protective, and rather resentful towards him.
+
+"Did you know Baxter was in Sheffield Hospital with typhoid?"
+he asked.
+
+She looked at him with startled grey eyes, and her face went pale.
+
+"No," she said, frightened.
+
+"He's getting better.  I went to see him yesterday--the doctor
+told me."
+
+Clara seemed stricken by the news.
+
+"Is he very bad?" she asked guiltily.
+
+"He has been.  He's mending now."
+
+"What did he say to you?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!  He seems to be sulking."
+
+There was a distance between the two of them.  He gave her
+more information.
+
+She went about shut up and silent.  The next time they took
+a walk together, she disengaged herself from his arm, and walked
+at a distance from him.  He was wanting her comfort badly.
+
+"Won't you be nice with me?" he asked.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"What's the matter?" he said, putting his arm across her shoulder.
+
+"Don't!" she said, disengaging herself.
+
+He left her alone, and returned to his own brooding.
+
+"Is it Baxter that upsets you?" he asked at length.
+
+"I HAVE been VILE to him!" she said.
+
+"I've said many a time you haven't treated him well,"
+he replied.
+
+And there was a hostility between them.  Each pursued his own
+train of thought.
+
+"I've treated him--no, I've treated him badly," she said. 
+"And now you treat ME badly.  It serves me right."
+
+"How do I treat you badly?" he said.
+
+"It serves me right," she repeated.  "I never considered him
+worth having, and now you don't consider ME.  But it serves me 
+right.  He loved me a thousand times better than you ever did."
+
+"He didn't!" protested Paul.
+
+"He did!  At any rate, he did respect me, and that's what you
+don't do."
+
+"It looked as if he respected you!" he said.
+
+"He did!  And I MADE him horrid--I know I did!  You've taught
+me that.  And he loved me a thousand times better than ever you do."
+
+"All right," said Paul.
+
+He only wanted to be left alone now.  He had his own trouble,
+which was almost too much to bear.  Clara only tormented him and made
+him tired.  He was not sorry when he left her.
+
+She went on the first opportunity to Sheffield to see
+her husband.  The meeting was not a success.  But she left him
+roses and fruit and money.  She wanted to make restitution. 
+It was not that she loved him.  As she looked at him lying there
+her heart did not warm with love.  Only she wanted to humble
+herself to him, to kneel before him.  She wanted now to be
+self-sacrificial.  After all, she had failed to make Morel really
+love her.  She was morally frightened.  She wanted to do penance. 
+So she kneeled to Dawes, and it gave him a subtle pleasure. 
+But the distance between them was still very great--too great. 
+It frightened the man.  It almost pleased the woman.  She liked
+to feel she was serving him across an insuperable distance. 
+She was proud now.
+
+Morel went to see Dawes once or twice.  There was a sort of
+friendship between the two men, who were all the while deadly rivals. 
+But they never mentioned the woman who was between them.
+
+Mrs. Morel got gradually worse.  At first they used to carry
+her downstairs, sometimes even into the garden.  She sat propped
+in her chair, smiling, and so pretty.  The gold wedding-ring shone
+on her white hand; her hair was carefully brushed.  And she watched
+the tangled sunflowers dying, the chrysanthemums coming out,
+and the dahlias.
+
+Paul and she were afraid of each other.  He knew, and she knew,
+that she was dying.  But they kept up a pretence of cheerfulness. 
+Every morning, when he got up, he went into her room in his pyjamas.
+
+"Did you sleep, my dear?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"Not very well?"
+
+"Well, yes! "
+
+Then he knew she had lain awake.  He saw her hand under
+the bedclothes, pressing the place on her side where the pain was.
+
+"Has it been bad?" he asked.
+
+"No.  It hurt a bit, but nothing to mention."
+
+And she sniffed in her old scornful way.  As she lay she
+looked like a girl.  And all the while her blue eyes watched him. 
+But there were the dark pain-circles beneath that made him ache again.
+
+"It's a sunny day," he said.
+
+"It's a beautiful day."
+
+"Do you think you'll be carried down?"
+
+"I shall see."
+
+Then he went away to get her breakfast.  All day long he
+was conscious of nothing but her.  It was a long ache that made
+him feverish.  Then, when he got home in the early evening, he glanced
+through the kitchen window.  She was not there; she had not got up.
+
+He ran straight upstairs and kissed her.  He was almost afraid
+to ask:
+
+"Didn't you get up, pigeon?"
+
+"No," she said.  "it was that morphia; it made me tired."
+
+"I think he gives you too much," he said.
+
+"I think he does," she answered.
+
+He sat down by the bed, miserably.  She had a way of curling
+and lying on her side, like a child.  The grey and brown hair
+was loose over her ear.
+
+"Doesn't it tickle you?" he said, gently putting it back.
+
+"It does," she replied.
+
+His face was near hers.  Her blue eyes smiled straight into his,
+like a girl's--warm, laughing with tender love.  It made him pant
+with terror, agony, and love.
+
+"You want your hair doing in a plait," he said.  "Lie still."
+
+And going behind her, he carefully loosened her hair,
+brushed it out.  It was like fine long silk of brown and grey. 
+Her head was snuggled between her shoulders.  As he lightly
+brushed and plaited her hair, he bit his lip and felt dazed. 
+It all seemed unreal, he could not understand it.
+
+At night he often worked in her room, looking up from time
+to time.  And so often he found her blue eyes fixed on him. 
+And when their eyes met, she smiled.  He worked away again mechanically,
+producing good stuff without knowing what he was doing.
+
+Sometimes he came in, very pale and still, with watchful,
+sudden eyes, like a man who is drunk almost to death.  They were
+both afraid of the veils that were ripping between them.
+
+Then she pretended to be better, chattered to him gaily,
+made a great fuss over some scraps of news.  For they had both come
+to the condition when they had to make much of the trifles, lest they
+should give in to the big thing, and their human independence would
+go smash.  They were afraid, so they made light of things and were gay.
+
+Sometimes as she lay he knew she was thinking of the past. 
+Her mouth gradually shut hard in a line.  She was holding herself rigid,
+so that she might die without ever uttering the great cry that
+was tearing from her.  He never forgot that hard, utterly lonely
+and stubborn clenching of her mouth, which persisted for weeks. 
+Sometimes, when it was lighter, she talked about her husband. 
+Now she hated him.  She did not forgive him.  She could not bear him
+to be in the room.  And a few things, the things that had been most
+bitter to her, came up again so strongly that they broke from her,
+and she told her son.
+
+He felt as if his life were being destroyed, piece by piece,
+within him.  Often the tears came suddenly.  He ran to the station,
+the tear-drops falling on the pavement.  Often he could not go
+on with his work.  The pen stopped writing.  He sat staring,
+quite unconscious.  And when he came round again he felt sick,
+and trembled in his limbs.  He never questioned what it was. 
+His mind did not try to analyse or understand.  He merely submitted,
+and kept his eyes shut; let the thing go over him.
+
+His mother did the same.  She thought of the pain, of the
+morphia, of the next day; hardly ever of the death.  That was coming,
+she knew.  She had to submit to it.  But she would never entreat it
+or make friends with it.  Blind, with her face shut hard and blind,
+she was pushed towards the door.  The days passed, the weeks,
+the months.
+
+Sometimes, in the sunny afternoons, she seemed almost happy.
+
+"I try to think of the nice times--when we went to Mablethorpe,
+and Robin Hood's Bay, and Shanklin," she said.  "After all,
+not everybody has seen those beautiful places.  And wasn't it beautiful! 
+I try to think of that, not of the other things."
+
+Then, again, for a whole evening she spoke not a word;
+neither did he.  They were together, rigid, stubborn, silent.  He went
+into his room at last to go to bed, and leaned against the doorway
+as if paralysed, unable to go any farther.  His consciousness went. 
+A furious storm, he knew not what, seemed to ravage inside him. 
+He stood leaning there, submitting, never questioning.
+
+In the morning they were both normal again, though her face
+was grey with the morphia, and her body felt like ash.  But they were
+bright again, nevertheless.  Often, especially if Annie or Arthur
+were at home, he neglected her.  He did not see much of Clara. 
+Usually he was with men.  He was quick and active and lively;
+but when his friends saw him go white to the gills, his eyes dark
+and glittering, they had a certain mistrust of him.  Sometimes he
+went to Clara, but she was almost cold to him.
+
+"Take me!" he said simply.
+
+Occasionally she would.  But she was afraid.  When he had
+her then, there was something in it that made her shrink away from
+him--something unnatural.  She grew to dread him.  He was so quiet,
+yet so strange.  She was afraid of the man who was not there with her,
+whom she could feel behind this make-belief lover; somebody sinister,
+that filled her with horror.  She began to have a kind of horror
+of him.  It was almost as if he were a criminal.  He wanted her--he
+had her--and it made her feel as if death itself had her in its grip. 
+She lay in horror.  There was no man there loving her.  She almost
+hated him.  Then came little bouts of tenderness.  But she dared not
+pity him.
+
+Dawes had come to Colonel Seely's Home near Nottingham. 
+There Paul visited him sometimes, Clara very occasionally. 
+Between the two men the friendship developed peculiarly. 
+Dawes, who mended very slowly and seemed very feeble, 
+seemed to leave himself in the hands of Morel.
+
+In the beginning of November Clara reminded Paul that it
+was her birthday.
+
+"I'd nearly forgotten," he said.
+
+"I'd thought quite," she replied.
+
+"No.  Shall we go to the seaside for the week-end?"
+
+They went.  It was cold and rather dismal.  She waited for him
+to be warm and tender with her, instead of which he seemed hardly
+aware of her.  He sat in the railway-carriage, looking out, and was
+startled when she spoke to him.  He was not definitely thinking. 
+Things seemed as if they did not exist.  She went across to him.
+
+"What is it dear?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing!" he said.  "Don't those windmill sails look monotonous?"
+
+He sat holding her hand.  He could not talk nor think. 
+It was a comfort, however, to sit holding her hand.  She was
+dissatisfied and miserable.  He was not with her; she was nothing.
+
+And in the evening they sat among the sandhills, looking at
+the black, heavy sea.
+
+"She will never give in," he said quietly.
+
+Clara's heart sank.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"There are different ways of dying.  My father's people
+are frightened, and have to be hauled out of life into death
+like cattle into a slaughter-house, pulled by the neck;
+but my mother's people are pushed from behind, inch by inch. 
+They are stubborn people, and won't die."
+
+"Yes," said Clara.
+
+"And she won't die.  She can't.  Mr. Renshaw, the parson, was in
+the other day.  'Think!' he said to her; 'you will have your mother
+and father, and your sisters, and your son, in the Other Land.' 
+And she said:  'I have done without them for a long time, and CAN
+do without them now.  It is the living I want, not the dead.' 
+She wants to live even now."
+
+"Oh, how horrible!" said Clara, too frightened to speak.
+
+"And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me," he went
+on monotonously.  "She's got such a will, it seems as if she would
+never go--never!"
+
+"Don't think of it!" cried Clara.
+
+"And she was religious--she is religious now--but it is no good.
+She simply won't give in.  And do you know,
+I said to her on Thursday:  'Mother, if I had to die, I'd die. 
+I'd WILL to die.'  And she said to me, sharp:  'Do you think I
+haven't?  Do you think you can die when you like?'"
+
+His voice ceased.  He did not cry, only went on speaking
+mo-notonously. Clara wanted to run.  She looked round. 
+There was the black, re-echoing shore, the dark sky down on her. 
+She got up terrified.  She wanted to be where there was light,
+where there were other people.  She wanted to be away from him. 
+He sat with his head dropped, not moving a muscle.
+
+"And I don't want her to eat," he said, "and she knows it. 
+When I ask her:  'Shall you have anything' she's almost afraid to
+say 'Yes.'  'I'll have a cup of Benger's,' she says.  'It'll only keep
+your strength up,' I said to her.  'Yes'--and she almost cried--'but
+there's such a gnawing when I eat nothing, I can't bear it.' 
+So I went and made her the food.  It's the cancer that gnaws like
+that at her.  I wish she'd die!"
+
+"Come!" said Clara roughly.  "I'm going."
+
+He followed her down the darkness of the sands.  He did
+not come to her.  He seemed scarcely aware of her existence. 
+And she was afraid of him, and disliked him.
+
+In the same acute daze they went back to Nottingham. 
+He was always busy, always doing something, always going from one
+to the other of his friends.
+
+On the Monday he went to see Baxter Dawes.  Listless and pale,
+the man rose to greet the other, clinging to his chair as he held
+out his hand.
+
+"You shouldn't get up," said Paul.
+
+Dawes sat down heavily, eyeing Morel with a sort of suspicion.
+
+"Don't you waste your time on me," he said, "if you've owt
+better to do."
+
+"I wanted to come," said Paul.  "Here!  I brought you some sweets."
+
+The invalid put them aside.
+
+"It's not been much of a week-end," said Morel.
+
+"How's your mother?" asked the other.
+
+"Hardly any different."
+
+"I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn't come
+on Sunday."
+
+"I was at Skegness," said Paul.  "I wanted a change."
+
+The other looked at him with dark eyes.  He seemed to be
+waiting, not quite daring to ask, trusting to be told.
+
+"I went with Clara," said Paul.
+
+"I knew as much," said Dawes quietly.
+
+"It was an old promise," said Paul.
+
+"You have it your own way," said Dawes.
+
+This was the first time Clara had been definitely mentioned
+between them.
+
+"Nay," said Morel slowly; "she's tired of me."
+
+Again Dawes looked at him.
+
+"Since August she's been getting tired of me," Morel repeated.
+
+The two men were very quiet together.  Paul suggested a game
+of draughts.  They played in silence.
+
+"I s'll go abroad when my mother's dead," said Paul.
+
+"Abroad!" repeated Dawes.
+
+"Yes; I don't care what I do."
+
+They continued the game.  Dawes was winning.
+
+"I s'll have to begin a new start of some sort," said Paul;
+"and you as well, I suppose."
+
+He took one of Dawes's pieces.
+
+"I dunno where," said the other.
+
+"Things have to happen," Morel said.  "It's no good doing
+anything--at least--no, I don't know.  Give me some toffee."
+
+The two men ate sweets, and began another game of draughts.
+
+"What made that scar on your mouth?" asked Dawes.
+
+Paul put his hand hastily to his lips, and looked over the garden.
+
+"I had a bicycle accident," he said.
+
+Dawes's hand trembled as he moved the piece.
+
+"You shouldn't ha' laughed at me," he said, very low.
+
+"When?"
+
+"That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed
+me--you with your hand on her shoulder."
+
+"I never laughed at you," said Paul.
+
+Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.
+
+"I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed,"
+said Morel.
+
+"It was that as did me," Dawes said, very low.
+
+Paul took another sweet.
+
+"I never laughed," he said, "except as I'm always laughing."
+
+They finished the game.
+
+That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have
+something to do.  The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell;
+the black clouds were like a low ceiling.  As he went along the ten
+miles of highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life,
+between the black levels of the sky and the earth.  But at the end
+was only the sick-room.  If he walked and walked for ever, there was
+only that place to come to.
+
+He was not tired when he got near home, or He did not know it. 
+Across the field he could see the red firelight leaping in her
+bedroom window.
+
+"When she's dead," he said to himself, "that fire will go out."
+
+He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. 
+His mothers door was wide open, because she slept alone still. 
+The red firelight dashed its glow on the landing.  Soft as a shadow,
+he peeped in her doorway.
+
+"Paul!" she murmured.
+
+His heart seemed to break again.  He went in and sat by the bed.
+
+"How late you are!" she murmured.
+
+"Not very," he said.
+
+"Why, what time is it?"  The murmur came plaintive and helpless.
+
+"It's only just gone eleven."
+
+That was not true; it was nearly one o'clock.
+
+"Oh!" she said; "I thought it was later."
+
+And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that would
+not go.
+
+"Can't you sleep, my pigeon?" he said.
+
+"No, I can't," she wailed.
+
+"Never mind, Little!" He said crooning.  "Never mind, my love. 
+I'll stop with you half an hour, my pigeon; then perhaps it will
+be better."
+
+And he sat by the bedside, slowly, rhythmically stroking her
+brows with his finger-tips, stroking her eyes shut, soothing her,
+holding her fingers in his free hand.  They could hear the sleepers'
+breathing in the other rooms.
+
+"Now go to bed," she murmured, lying quite still under his
+fingers and his love.
+
+"Will you sleep?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, I think so."
+
+"You feel better, my Little, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child.
+
+Still the days and the weeks went by.  He hardly ever went to see
+Clara now.  But he wandered restlessly from one person to another
+for some help, and there was none anywhere.  Miriam had written
+to him tenderly.  He went to see her.  Her heart was very sore
+when she saw him, white, gaunt, with his eyes dark and bewildered.
+Her pity came up, hurting her till she could not bear it.
+
+"How is she?" she asked.
+
+"The same--the same!" he said.  "The doctor says she can't last,
+but I know she will.  She'll be here at Christmas."
+
+Miriam shuddered.  She drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom;
+she kissed him and kissed him.  He submitted, but it was torture. 
+She could not kiss his agony.  That remained alone and apart. 
+She kissed his face, and roused his blood, while his soul was apart
+writhing with the agony of death.  And she kissed him and fingered
+his body, till at last, feeling he would go mad, he got away from her. 
+It was not what he wanted just then--not that.  And she thought she
+had soothed him and done him good.
+
+December came, and some snow.  He stayed at home all the while now. 
+They could not afford a nurse.  Annie came to look after her mother;
+the parish nurse, whom they loved, came in morning and evening. 
+Paul shared the nursing with Annie.  Often, in the evenings,
+when friends were in the kitchen with them, they all laughed together
+and shook with laughter.  It was reaction.  Paul was so comical,
+Annie was so quaint.  The whole party laughed till they cried,
+trying to subdue the sound.  And Mrs. Morel, lying alone in the
+darkness heard them, and among her bitterness was a feeling
+of relief.
+
+Then Paul would go upstairs gingerly, guiltily, to see if she
+had heard.
+
+"Shall I give you some milk?" he asked.
+
+"A little," she replied plaintively.
+
+And he would put some water with it, so that it should not
+nourish her.  Yet he loved her more than his own life.
+
+She had morphia every night, and her heart got fitful. 
+Annie slept beside her.  Paul would go in in the early morning,
+when his sister got up.  His mother was wasted and almost ashen
+in the morning with the morphia.  Darker and darker grew her eyes,
+all pupil, with the torture.  In the mornings the weariness and ache
+were too much to bear.  Yet she could not--would not--weep, or even
+complain much.
+
+"You slept a bit later this morning, little one," he would
+say to her.
+
+"Did I?" she answered, with fretful weariness.
+
+"Yes; it's nearly eight o'clock."
+
+He stood looking out of the window.  The whole country
+was bleak and pallid under the snow.  Then he felt her pulse. 
+There was a strong stroke and a weak one, like a sound and its echo. 
+That was supposed to betoken the end.  She let him feel her wrist,
+knowing what he wanted.
+
+Sometimes they looked in each other's eyes.  Then they almost
+seemed to make an agreement.  It was almost as if he were agreeing
+to die also.  But she did not consent to die; she would not. 
+Her body was wasted to a fragment of ash.  Her eyes were dark and
+full of torture.
+
+"Can't you give her something to put an end to it?" he asked
+the doctor at last.
+
+But the doctor shook his head.
+
+"She can't last many days now, Mr. Morel," he said.
+
+Paul went indoors.
+
+"I can't bear it much longer; we shall all go mad," said Annie.
+
+The two sat down to breakfast.
+
+"Go and sit with her while we have breakfast, Minnie," said Annie. 
+But the girl was frightened.
+
+Paul went through the country, through the woods, over the snow. 
+He saw the marks of rabbits and birds in the white snow. 
+He wandered miles and miles.  A smoky red sunset came on slowly,
+painfully, lingering.  He thought she would die that day.  There was
+a donkey that came up to him over the snow by the wood's edge,
+and put its head against him, and walked with him alongside.
+He put his arms round the donkey's neck, and stroked his cheeks
+against his ears.
+
+His mother, silent, was still alive, with her hard mouth
+gripped grimly, her eyes of dark torture only living.
+
+It was nearing Christmas; there was more snow.  Annie and
+he felt as if they could go on no more.  Still her dark eyes
+were alive.  Morel, silent and frightened, obliterated himself. 
+Sometimes he would go into the sick-room and look at her. 
+Then he backed out, bewildered.
+
+She kept her hold on life still.  The miners had been out
+on strike, and returned a fortnight or so before Christmas. 
+Minnie went upstairs with the feeding-cup.  It was two days after
+the men had been in.
+
+"Have the men been saying their hands are sore, Minnie?"
+she asked, in the faint, querulous voice that would not give in. 
+Minnie stood surprised.
+
+"Not as I know of, Mrs. Morel," she answered.
+
+"But I'll bet they are sore," said the dying woman, as she
+moved her head with a sigh of weariness.  "But, at any rate,
+there'll be something to buy in with this week."
+
+Not a thing did she let slip.
+
+"Your father's pit things will want well airing, Annie," she said,
+when the men were going back to work.
+
+"Don't you bother about that, my dear," said Annie.
+
+One night Annie and Paul were alone.  Nurse was upstairs.
+
+"She'll live over Christmas," said Annie.  They were both full
+of horror.  "She won't," he replied grimly.  "I s'll give her morphia."
+
+"Which?" said Annie.
+
+"All that came from Sheffield," said Paul.
+
+"Ay--do!" said Annie.
+
+The next day he was painting in the bedroom.  She seemed
+to be asleep.  He stepped softly backwards and forwards at his
+painting.  Suddenly her small voice wailed:
+
+"Don't walk about, Paul."
+
+He looked round.  Her eyes, like dark bubbles in her face,
+were looking at him.
+
+"No, my dear," he said gently.  Another fibre seemed to snap
+in his heart.
+
+That evening he got all the morphia pills there were, and took
+them downstairs.  Carefully he crushed them to powder.
+
+"What are you doing?" said Annie.
+
+"I s'll put 'em in her night milk."
+
+Then they both laughed together like two conspiring children. 
+On top of all their horror flicked this little sanity.
+
+Nurse did not come that night to settle Mrs. Morel down. 
+Paul went up with the hot milk in a feeding-cup.  It was nine
+o'clock.
+
+She was reared up in bed, and he put the feeding-cup between her
+lips that he would have died to save from any hurt.  She took a sip,
+then put the spout of the cup away and looked at him with her dark,
+wondering eyes.  He looked at her.
+
+"Oh, it IS bitter, Paul!" she said, making a little grimace.
+
+"It's a new sleeping draught the doctor gave me for you," he said. 
+"He thought it would leave you in such a state in the morning."
+
+"And I hope it won't," she said, like a child.
+
+She drank some more of the milk.
+
+"But it IS horrid!" she said.
+
+He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making
+a little move.
+
+"I know--I tasted it," he said.  "But I'll give you some clean
+milk afterwards."
+
+"I think so," she said, and she went on with the draught. 
+She was obedient to him like a child.  He wondered if she knew. 
+He saw her poor wasted throat moving as she drank with difficulty. 
+Then he ran downstairs for more milk.  There were no grains in the bottom
+of the cup.
+
+"Has she had it?" whispered Annie.
+
+"Yes--and she said it was bitter."
+
+"Oh!" laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her teeth.
+
+"And I told her it was a new draught.  Where's that milk?"
+
+They both went upstairs.
+
+"I wonder why nurse didn't come to settle me down?"
+complained the mother, like a child, wistfully.
+
+"She said she was going to a concert, my love," replied Annie.
+
+"Did she?"
+
+They were silent a minute.  Mrs. Morel gulped the little
+clean milk.
+
+"Annie, that draught WAS horrid!" she said plaintively.
+
+"Was it, my love?  Well, never mind."
+
+The mother sighed again with weariness.  Her pulse was
+very irregular.
+
+"Let US settle you down," said Annie.  "Perhaps nurse will
+be so late."
+
+"Ay," said the mother--"try."
+
+They turned the clothes back.  Paul saw his mother LIke a girl
+curled up in her flannel nightdress.  Quickly they made one half
+of the bed, moved her, made the other, straightened her nightgown
+over her small feet, and covered her up.
+
+"There," said Paul, stroking her softly.  "There!--now you'll sleep."
+
+"Yes," she said.  "I didn't think you could do the bed so nicely,"
+she added, almost gaily.  Then she curled up, with her cheek
+on her hand, her head snugged between her shoulders.  Paul put
+the long thin plait of grey hair over her shoulder and kissed her.
+
+"You'll sleep, my love," he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered trustfully.  "Good-night."
+
+They put out the light, and it was still.
+
+Morel was in bed.  Nurse did not come.  Annie and Paul came
+to look at her at about eleven.  She seemed to be sleeping as usual
+after her draught.  Her mouth had come a bit open.
+
+"Shall we sit up?" said Paul.
+
+"I s'll lie with her as I always do," said Annie.  "She might
+wake up."
+
+"All right.  And call me if you see any difference."
+
+"Yes."
+
+They lingered before the bedroom fire, feeling the night big
+and black and snowy outside, their two selves alone in the world. 
+At last he went into the next room and went to bed.
+
+He slept almost immediately, but kept waking every now and again. 
+Then he went sound asleep.  He started awake at Annie's whispered,
+"Paul, Paul!"  He saw his sister in her white nightdress, with her
+long plait of hair down her back, standing in the darkness.
+
+"Yes?" he whispered, sitting up.
+
+"Come and look at her."
+
+He slipped out of bed.  A bud of gas was burning in the
+sick chamber.  His mother lay with her cheek on her hand, curled up
+as she had gone to sleep.  But her mouth had fallen open, and she
+breathed with great, hoarse breaths, like snoring, and there were 
+long intervals between.
+
+"She's going!" he whispered.
+
+"Yes," said Annie.
+
+"How long has she been like it?"
+
+"I only just woke up."
+
+Annie huddled into the dressing-gown, Paul wrapped himself
+in a brown blanket.  It was three o'clock.  He mended the fire. 
+Then the two sat waiting.  The great, snoring breath was taken--held
+awhile--then given back.  There was a space--a long space. 
+Then they started.  The great, snoring breath was taken again. 
+He bent close down and looked at her.
+
+"Isn't it awful!" whispered Annie.
+
+He nodded.  They sat down again helplessly.  Again came the great,
+snoring breath.  Again they hung suspended.  Again it was given back,
+long and harsh.  The sound, so irregular, at such wide intervals,
+sounded through the house.  Morel, in his room, slept on. 
+Paul and Annie sat crouched, huddled, motionless.  The great snoring
+sound began again--there was a painful pause while the breath was
+held--back came the rasping breath.  Minute after minute passed. 
+Paul looked at her again, bending low over her.
+
+"She may last like this," he said.
+
+They were both silent.  He looked out of the window, and could
+faintly discern the snow on the garden.
+
+"You go to my bed," he said to Annie.  "I'll sit up."
+
+"No," she said, "I'll stop with you."
+
+"I'd rather you didn't," he said.
+
+At last Annie crept out of the room, and he was alone. 
+He hugged himself in his brown blanket, crouched in front of
+his mother, watching.  She looked dreadful, with the bottom jaw
+fallen back.  He watched.  Sometimes he thought the great breath
+would never begin again.  He could not bear it--the waiting. 
+Then suddenly, startling him, came the great harsh sound. 
+He mended the fire again, noiselessly.  She must not be disturbed. 
+The minutes went by.  The night was going, breath by breath. 
+Each time the sound came he felt it wring him, till at last he could
+not feel so much.
+
+His father got up.  Paul heard the miner drawing his
+stockings on, yawning.  Then Morel, in shirt and stockings, entered.
+
+"Hush!" said Paul.
+
+Morel stood watching.  Then he looked at his son, helplessly,
+and in horror.
+
+"Had I better stop a-whoam?" he whispered.
+
+"No.  Go to work.  She'll last through to-morrow."
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+"Yes.  Go to work."
+
+The miner looked at her again, in fear, and went obediently
+out of the room.  Paul saw the tape of his garters swinging against
+his legs.
+
+After another half-hour Paul went downstairs and drank a cup
+of tea, then returned.  Morel, dressed for the pit, came upstairs again.
+
+"Am I to go?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+And in a few minutes Paul heard his father's heavy steps go
+thudding over the deadening snow.  Miners called in the streets
+as they tramped in gangs to work.  The terrible, long-drawn breaths
+continued--heave--heave--heave; then a long pause--then--ah-h-h-h-h!
+as it came back.  Far away over the snow sounded the hooters
+of the ironworks.  One after another they crowed and boomed,
+some small and far away, some near, the blowers of the collieries
+and the other works.  Then there was silence.  He mended the fire. 
+The great breaths broke the silence--she looked just the same. 
+He put back the blind and peered out.  Still it was dark. 
+Perhaps there was a lighter tinge.  Perhaps the snow was bluer. 
+He drew up the blind and got dressed.  Then, shuddering, he drank
+brandy from the bottle on the wash-stand. The snow WAS growing blue. 
+He heard a cart clanking down the street.  Yes, it was seven o'clock,
+and it was coming a little bit light.  He heard some people calling. 
+The world was waking.  A grey, deathly dawn crept over the snow. 
+Yes, he could see the houses.  He put out the gas.  It seemed
+very dark.  The breathing came still, but he was almost used to it. 
+He could see her.  She was just the same.  He wondered if he piled
+heavy clothes on top of her it would stop.  He looked at her. 
+That was not her--not her a bit.  If he piled the blanket and heavy coats
+on her---
+
+Suddenly the door opened, and Annie entered.  She looked
+at him questioningly.
+
+"Just the same," he said calmly.
+
+They whispered together a minute, then he went downstairs
+to get breakfast.  It was twenty to eight.  Soon Annie came down.
+
+"Isn't it awful!  Doesn't she look awful!" she whispered,
+dazed with horror.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"If she looks like that!" said Annie.
+
+"Drink some tea," he said.
+
+They went upstairs again.  Soon the neighbours came with their
+frightened question:
+
+"How is she?"
+
+It went on just the same.  She lay with her cheek in her hand,
+her mouth fallen open, and the great, ghastly snores came and went.
+
+At ten o'clock nurse came.  She looked strange and woebegone.
+
+"Nurse," cried Paul, "she'll last like this for days?"
+
+"She can't, Mr. Morel," said nurse.  "She can't."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful!" wailed the nurse.  "Who would have thought
+she could stand it?  Go down now, Mr. Morel, go down."
+
+At last, at about eleven o'clock, he went downstairs
+and sat in the neighbour's house.  Annie was downstairs also. 
+Nurse and Arthur were upstairs.  Paul sat with his head in his hand. 
+Suddenly Annie came flying across the yard crying, half mad:
+
+"Paul--Paul--she's gone!"
+
+In a second he was back in his own house and upstairs. 
+She lay curled up and still, with her face on her hand, and nurse
+was wiping her mouth.  They all stood back.  He kneeled down,
+and put his face to hers and his arms round her:
+
+"My love--my love--oh, my love!" he whispered again and again. 
+"My love--oh, my love!"
+
+Then he heard the nurse behind him, crying, saying:
+
+"She's better, Mr. Morel, she's better."
+
+When he took his face up from his warm, dead mother he went
+straight downstairs and began blacking his boots.
+
+There was a good deal to do, letters to write, and so on. 
+The doctor came and glanced at her, and sighed.
+
+"Ay--poor thing!" he said, then turned away.  "Well, call
+at the surgery about six for the certificate."
+
+The father came home from work at about four o'clock.  He
+dragged silently into the house and sat down.  Minnie bustled to
+give him his dinner.  Tired, he laid his black arms on the table. 
+There were swede turnips for his dinner, which he liked. 
+Paul wondered if he knew.  It was some time, and nobody had spoken. 
+At last the son said:
+
+"You noticed the blinds were down?"
+
+Morel looked up.
+
+"No," he said.  "Why--has she gone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When wor that?"
+
+"About twelve this morning."
+
+"H'm!"
+
+The miner sat still for a moment, then began his dinner. 
+It was as if nothing had happened.  He ate his turnips in silence. 
+Afterwards he washed and went upstairs to dress.  The door of her room
+was shut.
+
+"Have you seen her?"  Annie asked of him when he came down.
+
+"No," he said.
+
+In a little while he went out.  Annie went away, and Paul
+called on the undertaker, the clergyman, the doctor, the registrar. 
+It was a long business.  He got back at nearly eight o'clock.  The
+undertaker was coming soon to measure for the coffin.  The house
+was empty except for her.  He took a candle and went upstairs.
+
+The room was cold, that had been warm for so long.  Flowers,
+bottles, plates, all sick-room litter was taken away; everything was
+harsh and austere.  She lay raised on the bed, the sweep of the sheet
+from the raised feet was like a clean curve of snow, so silent. 
+She lay like a maiden asleep.  With his candle in his hand, he bent
+over her.  She lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her love. 
+The mouth was a little open as if wondering from the suffering,
+but her face was young, her brow clear and white as if life had
+never touched it.  He looked again at the eyebrows, at the small,
+winsome nose a bit on one side.  She was young again.  Only the hair
+as it arched so beautifully from her temples was mixed with silver,
+and the two simple plaits that lay on her shoulders were filigree
+of silver and brown.  She would wake up.  She would lift her eyelids. 
+She was with him still.  He bent and kissed her passionately.
+But there was coldness against his mouth.  He bit his
+lips with horror.  Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let
+her go.  No!  He stroked the hair from her temples.  That, too,
+was cold.  He saw the mouth so dumb and wondering at the hurt. 
+Then he crouched on the floor, whispering to her:
+
+"Mother, mother!"
+
+He was still with her when the undertakers came, young men
+who had been to school with him.  They touched her reverently,
+and in a quiet, businesslike fashion.  They did not look at her. 
+He watched jealously.  He and Annie guarded her fiercely. 
+They would not let anybody come to see her, and the neighbours
+were offended.
+
+After a while Paul went out of the house, and played cards
+at a friend's.  It was midnight when he got back.  His father rose
+from the couch as he entered, saying in a plaintive way:
+
+"I thought tha wor niver comin', lad."
+
+"I didn't think you'd sit up," said Paul.
+
+His father looked so forlorn.  Morel had been a man without
+fear--simply nothing frightened him.  Paul realised with a start that
+he had been afraid to go to bed, alone in the house with his dead. 
+He was sorry.
+
+"I forgot you'd be alone, father," he said.
+
+"Dost want owt to eat?" asked Morel.
+
+"No."
+
+"Sithee--I made thee a drop o' hot milk.  Get it down thee;
+it's cold enough for owt."
+
+Paul drank it.
+
+After a while Morel went to bed.  He hurried past the closed door,
+and left his own door open.  Soon the son came upstairs also. 
+He went in to kiss her good-night, as usual.  It was cold and dark. 
+He wished they had kept her fire burning.  Still she dreamed her
+young dream.  But she would be cold.
+
+"My dear!" he whispered.  "My dear!"
+
+And he did not kiss her, for fear she should be cold
+and strange to him.  It eased him she slept so beautifully. 
+He shut her door softly, not to wake her, and went to bed.
+
+In the morning Morel summoned his courage, hearing Annie
+downstairs and Paul coughing in the room across the landing. 
+He opened her door, and went into the darkened room.  He saw the
+white uplifted form in the twilight, but her he dared not see. 
+Bewildered, too frightened to possess any of his faculties, he got
+out of the room again and left her.  He never looked at her again. 
+He had not seen her for months, because he had not dared to look. 
+And she looked like his young wife again.
+
+"Have you seen her?"  Annie asked of him sharply after breakfast.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"And don't you think she looks nice?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He went out of the house soon after.  And all the time
+He seemed to be creeping aside to avoid it.
+
+Paul went about from place to place, doing the business of
+the death.  He met Clara in Nottingham, and they had tea together
+in a cafe, when they were quite jolly again.  She was infinitely
+relieved to find he did not take it tragically.
+
+Later, when the relatives began to come for the funeral,
+the affair became public, and the children became social beings. 
+They put themselves aside.  They buried her in a furious storm
+of rain and wind.  The wet clay glistened, all the white flowers
+were soaked.  Annie gripped his arm and leaned forward. 
+Down below she saw a dark corner of William's coffin.  The oak
+box sank steadily.  She was gone.  The rain poured in the grave. 
+The procession of black, with its umbrellas glistening, turned away. 
+The cemetery was deserted under the drenching cold rain.
+
+Paul went home and busied himself supplying the guests with drinks. 
+His father sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Morel's relatives,
+"superior" people, and wept, and said what a good lass she'd been,
+and how he'd tried to do everything he could for her--everything.
+He had striven all his life to do what he could for her, and he'd
+nothing to reproach himself with.  She was gone, but he'd done
+his best for her.  He wiped his eyes with his white handkerchief. 
+He'd nothing to reproach himself for, he repeated.  All his life he'd
+done his best for her.
+
+And that was how he tried to dismiss her.  He never
+thought of her personally.  Everything deep in him he denied. 
+Paul hated his father for sitting sentimentalising over her. 
+He knew he would do it in the public-houses.  For the real tragedy
+went on in Morel in spite of himself.  Sometimes, later, he came
+down from his afternoon sleep, white and cowering.
+
+"I HAVE been dreaming of thy mother," he said in a small voice.
+
+"Have you, father?  When I dream of her it's always just as she
+was when she was well.  I dream of her often, but it seems quite
+nice and natural, as if nothing had altered."
+
+But Morel crouched in front of the fire in terror.
+
+The weeks passed half-real, not much pain, not much of anything,
+perhaps a little relief, mostly a nuit blanche.  Paul went restless
+from place to place.  For some months, since his mother had been worse,
+he had not made love to Clara.  She was, as it were, dumb to him,
+rather distant.  Dawes saw her very occasionally, but the two
+could not get an inch across the great distance between them. 
+The three of them were drifting forward.
+
+Dawes mended very slowly.  He was in the convalescent home
+at Skegness at Christmas, nearly well again.  Paul went to the
+seaside for a few days.  His father was with Annie in Sheffield. 
+Dawes came to Paul's lodgings.  His time in the home was up. 
+The two men, between whom was such a big reserve, seemed faithful
+to each other.  Dawes depended on Morel now.  He knew Paul and Clara
+had practically separated.
+
+Two days after Christmas Paul was to go back to Nottingham. 
+The evening before he sat with Dawes smoking before the fire.
+
+"You know Clara's coming down for the day to-morrow?"
+he said.
+
+The other man glanced at him.
+
+"Yes, you told me," he replied.
+
+Paul drank the remainder of his glass of whisky.
+
+"I told the landlady your wife was coming," he said.
+
+"Did you?" said Dawes, shrinking, but almost leaving himself
+in the other's hands.  He got up rather stiffly, and reached
+for Morel's glass.
+
+"Let me fill you up," he said.
+
+Paul jumped up.
+
+"You sit still," he said.
+
+But Dawes, with rather shaky hand, continued to mix the drink.
+
+"Say when," he said.
+
+"Thanks!" replied the other.  "But you've no business to get up."
+
+"It does me good, lad," replied Dawes.  "I begin to think
+I'm right again, then."
+
+"You are about right, you know."
+
+"I am, certainly I am," said Dawes, nodding to him.
+
+"And Len says he can get you on in Sheffield."
+
+Dawes glanced at him again, with dark eyes that agreed with
+everything the other would say, perhaps a trifle dominated by him.
+
+"It's funny," said Paul, "starting again.  I feel in a lot
+bigger mess than you."
+
+"In what way, lad?"
+
+"I don't know.  I don't know.  It's as if I was in a tangled
+sort of hole, rather dark and dreary, and no road anywhere."
+
+"I know--I understand it," Dawes said, nodding.  "But you'll
+find it'll come all right."
+
+He spoke caressingly.
+
+"I suppose so," said Paul.
+
+Dawes knocked his pipe in a hopeless fashion.
+
+"You've not done for yourself like I have," he said.
+
+Morel saw the wrist and the white hand of the other man
+gripping the stem of the pipe and knocking out the ash, as if he
+had given up.
+
+"How old are you?"  Paul asked.
+
+"Thirty-nine," replied Dawes, glancing at him.
+
+Those brown eyes, full of the consciousness of failure,
+almost pleading for reassurance, for someone to re-establish the man
+in himself, to warm him, to set him up firm again, troubled Paul.
+
+"You'll just be in your prime," said Morel.  "You don't look
+as if much life had gone out of you."
+
+The brown eyes of the other flashed suddenly.
+
+"It hasn't," he said.  "The go is there."
+
+Paul looked up and laughed.
+
+"We've both got plenty of life in us yet to make things fly,"
+he said.
+
+The eyes of the two men met.  They exchanged one look. 
+Having recognised the stress of passion each in the other, they both
+drank their whisky.
+
+"Yes, begod!" said Dawes, breathless.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"And I don't see," said Paul, "why you shouldn't go on where
+you left off."
+
+"What---" said Dawes, suggestively.
+
+"Yes--fit your old home together again."
+
+Dawes hid his face and shook his head.
+
+"Couldn't be done," he said, and looked up with an ironic smile.
+
+"Why?  Because you don't want?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+They smoked in silence.  Dawes showed his teeth as he bit
+his pipe stem.
+
+"You mean you don't want her?" asked Paul.
+
+Dawes stared up at the picture with a caustic expression
+on his face.
+
+"I hardly know," he said.
+
+The smoke floated softly up.
+
+"I believe she wants you," said Paul.
+
+"Do you?" replied the other, soft, satirical, abstract.
+
+"Yes.  She never really hitched on to me--you were always there
+in the background.  That's why she wouldn't get a divorce."
+
+Dawes continued to stare in a satirical fashion at the picture
+over the mantelpiece.
+
+"That's how women are with me," said Paul.  "They want me
+like mad, but they don't want to belong to me.  And she BELONGED
+to you all the time.  I knew."
+
+The triumphant male came up in Dawes.  He showed his teeth
+more distinctly.
+
+"Perhaps I was a fool," he said.
+
+"You were a big fool," said Morel.
+
+"But perhaps even THEN you were a bigger fool," said Dawes.
+
+There was a touch of triumph and malice in it.
+
+"Do you think so?" said Paul.
+
+They were silent for some time.
+
+"At any rate, I'm clearing out to-morrow," said Morel.
+
+"I see," answered Dawes.
+
+Then they did not talk any more.  The instinct to murder
+each other had returned.  They almost avoided each other.
+
+They shared the same bedroom.  When they retired Dawes
+seemed abstract, thinking of something.  He sat on the side
+of the bed in his shirt, looking at his legs.
+
+"Aren't you getting cold?" asked Morel.
+
+"I was lookin' at these legs," replied the other.
+
+"What's up with 'em?  They look all right," replied Paul,
+from his bed.
+
+"They look all right.  But there's some water in 'em yet."
+
+"And what about it?"
+
+"Come and look."
+
+Paul reluctantly got out of bed and went to look at the rather
+handsome legs of the other man that were covered with glistening,
+dark gold hair.
+
+"Look here," said Dawes, pointing to his shin.  "Look at
+the water under here."
+
+"Where?" said Paul.
+
+The man pressed in his finger-tips.  They left little dents
+that filled up slowly.
+
+"It's nothing," said Paul.
+
+"You feel," said Dawes.
+
+Paul tried with his fingers.  It made little dents.
+
+"H'm!" he said.
+
+"Rotten, isn't it?" said Dawes.
+
+"Why?  It's nothing much."
+
+"You're not much of a man with water in your legs."
+
+"I can't see as it makes any difference," said Morel. 
+"I've got a weak chest."
+
+He returned to his own bed.
+
+"I suppose the rest of me's all right," said Dawes, and he
+put out the light.
+
+In the morning it was raining.  Morel packed his bag. 
+The sea was grey and shaggy and dismal.  He seemed to be cutting
+himself off from life more and more.  It gave him a wicked pleasure
+to do it.
+
+The two men were at the station.  Clara stepped out of the train,
+and came along the platform, very erect and coldly composed. 
+She wore a long coat and a tweed hat.  Both men hated her
+for her composure.  Paul shook hands with her at the barrier. 
+Dawes was leaning against the bookstall, watching.  His black overcoat
+was buttoned up to the chin because of the rain.  He was pale,
+with almost a touch of nobility in his quietness.  He came forward,
+limping slightly.
+
+"You ought to look better than this," she said.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right now."
+
+The three stood at a loss.  She kept the two men hesitating
+near her.
+
+"Shall we go to the lodging straight off," said Paul,
+"or somewhere else?"
+
+"We may as well go home," said Dawes.
+
+Paul walked on the outside of the pavement, then Dawes, then Clara. 
+They made polite conversation.  The sitting-room faced the sea,
+whose tide, grey and shaggy, hissed not far off.
+
+Morel swung up the big arm-chair.
+
+"Sit down, Jack," he said.
+
+"I don't want that chair," said Dawes.
+
+"Sit down!"  Morel repeated.
+
+Clara took off her things and laid them on the couch.  She had
+a slight air of resentment.  Lifting her hair with her fingers,
+she sat down, rather aloof and composed.  Paul ran downstairs
+to speak to the landlady.
+
+"I should think you're cold," said Dawes to his wife. 
+"Come nearer to the fire."
+
+"Thank you, I'm quite warm," she answered.
+
+She looked out of the window at the rain and at the sea.
+
+"When are you going back?" she asked.
+
+"Well, the rooms are taken until to-morrow, so he wants me
+to stop.  He's going back to-night."
+
+"And then you're thinking of going to Sheffield?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you fit to start work?"
+
+"I'm going to start."
+
+"You've really got a place?"
+
+"Yes--begin on Monday."
+
+"You don't look fit."
+
+"Why don't I?"
+
+She looked again out of the window instead of answering.
+
+"And have you got lodgings in Sheffield?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Again she looked away out of the window.  The panes were
+blurred with streaming rain.
+
+"And can you manage all right?" she asked.
+
+"I s'd think so.  I s'll have to!"
+
+They were silent when Morel returned.
+
+"I shall go by the four-twenty," he said as he entered.
+
+Nobody answered.
+
+"I wish you'd take your boots off," he said to Clara.
+
+"There's a pair of slippers of mine."
+
+"Thank you," she said.  "They aren't wet."
+
+He put the slippers near her feet.  She left them there.
+
+Morel sat down.  Both the men seemed helpless, and each of them
+had a rather hunted look.  But Dawes now carried himself quietly,
+seemed to yield himself, while Paul seemed to screw himself up. 
+Clara thought she had never seen him look so small and mean. 
+He was as if trying to get himself into the smallest possible compass. 
+And as he went about arranging, and as he sat talking, there seemed
+something false about him and out of tune.  Watching him unknown,
+she said to herself there was no stability about him.  He was fine
+in his way, passionate, and able to give her drinks of pure life
+when he was in one mood.  And now he looked paltry and insignificant. 
+There was nothing stable about him.  Her husband had more manly dignity. 
+At any rate HE did not waft about with any wind.  There was something
+evanescent about Morel, she thought, something shifting and false. 
+He would never make sure ground for any woman to stand on. 
+She despised him rather for his shrinking together, getting smaller. 
+Her husband at least was manly, and when he was beaten gave in. 
+But this other would never own to being beaten.  He would shift round
+and round, prowl, get smaller.  She despised him.  And yet she watched
+him rather than Dawes, and it seemed as if their three fates lay in
+his hands.  She hated him for it.
+
+She seemed to understand better now about men, and what they could
+or would do.  She was less afraid of them, more sure of herself. 
+That they were not the small egoists she had imagined them made
+her more comfortable.  She had learned a good deal--almost as much
+as she wanted to learn.  Her cup had been full.  It was still as full
+as she could carry.  On the whole, she would not be sorry when he
+was gone.
+
+They had dinner, and sat eating nuts and drinking by the fire. 
+Not a serious word had been spoken.  Yet Clara realised that Morel
+was withdrawing from the circle, leaving her the option to stay
+with her husband.  It angered her.  He was a mean fellow, after all,
+to take what he wanted and then give her back.  She did
+not remember that she herself had had what she wanted,
+and really, at the bottom of her heart, wished to be given back.
+
+Paul felt crumpled up and lonely.  His mother had really
+supported his life.  He had loved her; they two had, in fact,
+faced the world together.  Now she was gone, and for ever behind
+him was the gap in life, the tear in the veil, through which his
+life seemed to drift slowly, as if he were drawn towards death. 
+He wanted someone of their own free initiative to help him.  The lesser
+things he began to let go from him, for fear of this big thing,
+the lapse towards death, following in the wake of his beloved. 
+Clara could not stand for him to hold on to.  She wanted him,
+but not to understand him.  He felt she wanted the man on top,
+not the real him that was in trouble.  That would be too much trouble
+to her; he dared not give it her.  She could not cope with him. 
+It made him ashamed.  So, secretly ashamed because he was in such
+a mess, because his own hold on life was so unsure, because nobody
+held him, feeling unsubstantial, shadowy, as if he did not count
+for much in this concrete world, he drew himself together smaller
+and smaller.  He did not want to die; he would not give in. 
+But he was not afraid of death.  If nobody would help, he would go
+on alone.
+
+Dawes had been driven to the extremity of life, until he
+was afraid.  He could go to the brink of death, he could lie on
+the edge and look in.  Then, cowed, afraid, he had to crawl back,
+and like a beggar take what offered.  There was a certain nobility
+in it.  As Clara saw, he owned himself beaten, and he wanted
+to be taken back whether or not.  That she could do for him. 
+It was three o'clock.
+
+"I am going by the four-twenty," said Paul again to Clara. 
+"Are you coming then or later?"
+
+"I don't know," she said.
+
+"I'm meeting my father in Nottingham at seven-fifteen,"
+he said.
+
+"Then," she answered, "I'll come later."
+
+Dawes jerked suddenly, as if he had been held on a strain. 
+He looked out over the sea, but he saw nothing.
+
+"There are one or two books in the corner," said Morel. 
+"I've done with 'em."
+
+At about four o'clock he went.
+
+"I shall see you both later," he said, as he shook hands.
+
+"I suppose so," said Dawes.  "An' perhaps--one day--I s'll
+be able to pay you back the money as---"
+
+"I shall come for it, you'll see," laughed Paul.  "I s'll
+be on the rocks before I'm very much older."
+
+"Ay--well---" said Dawes.
+
+"Good-bye," he said to Clara.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, giving him her hand.  Then she glanced
+at him for the last time, dumb and humble.
+
+He was gone.  Dawes and his wife sat down again.
+
+"It's a nasty day for travelling," said the man.
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+They talked in a desultory fashion until it grew dark. 
+The landlady brought in the tea.  Dawes drew up his chair to the
+table without being invited, like a husband.  Then he sat humbly
+waiting for his cup.  She served him as she would, like a wife,
+not consulting his wish.
+
+After tea, as it drew near to six o'clock, he went to the window. 
+All was dark outside.  The sea was roaring.
+
+"It's raining yet," he said.
+
+"Is it?" she answered.
+
+"You won't go to-night, shall you?" he said, hesitating.
+
+She did not answer.  He waited.
+
+"I shouldn't go in this rain," he said.
+
+"Do you WANT me to stay?" she asked.
+
+His hand as he held the dark curtain trembled.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+He remained with his back to her.  She rose and went slowly
+to him.  He let go the curtain, turned, hesitating, towards her. 
+She stood with her hands behind her back, looking up at him in a heavy,
+inscrutable fashion.
+
+"Do you want me, Baxter?" she asked.
+
+His voice was hoarse as he answered:
+
+"Do you want to come back to me?"
+
+She made a moaning noise, lifted her arms, and put them round
+his neck, drawing him to her.  He hid his face on her shoulder,
+holding her clasped.
+
+"Take me back!" she whispered, ecstatic.  "Take me back,
+take me back!"  And she put her fingers through his fine, thin dark hair,
+as if she were only semi-conscious.  He tightened his grasp on her.
+
+"Do you want me again?" he murmured, broken.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+DERELICT
+
+CLARA went with her husband to Sheffield, and Paul scarcely saw
+her again.  Walter Morel seemed to have let all the trouble go over him,
+and there he was, crawling about on the mud of it, just the same. 
+There was scarcely any bond between father and son, save that each
+felt he must not let the other go in any actual want.  As there
+was no one to keep on the home, and as they could neither of them
+bear the emptiness of the house, Paul took lodgings in Nottingham,
+and Morel went to live with a friendly family in Bestwood.
+
+Everything seemed to have gone smash for the young man. 
+He could not paint.  The picture he finished on the day of his
+mother's death--one that satisfied him--was the last thing he did. 
+At work there was no Clara.  When he came home he could not take up
+his brushes again.  There was nothing left.
+
+So he was always in the town at one place or another,
+drinking, knocking about with the men he knew.  It really wearied him. 
+He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark,
+strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something.
+
+Everything seemed so different, so unreal.  There seemed
+no reason why people should go along the street, and houses
+pile up in the daylight.  There seemed no reason why these
+things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. 
+His friends talked to him:  he heard the sounds, and he answered. 
+But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand.
+
+He was most himself when he was alone, or working hard and
+mechanically at the factory.  In the latter case there was pure
+forgetfulness, when he lapsed from consciousness.  But it had to come
+to an end.  It hurt him so, that things had lost their reality. 
+The first snowdrops came.  He saw the tiny drop-pearls among the
+grey.  They would have given him the liveliest emotion at one time. 
+Now they were there, but they did not seem to mean anything.  In
+a few moments they would cease to occupy that place, and just the
+space would be, where they had been.  Tall, brilliant tram-cars
+ran along the street at night.  It seemed almost a wonder they
+should trouble to rustle backwards and forwards.  "Why trouble
+to go tilting down to Trent Bridges?" he asked of the big trams. 
+It seemed they just as well might NOT be as be.
+
+The realest thing was the thick darkness at night.  That seemed
+to him whole and comprehensible and restful.  He could leave himself
+to it.  Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew
+along down the pavement.  He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists,
+a flame of agony going over him.  And he saw again the sick-room,
+his mother, her eyes.  Unconsciously he had been with her,
+in her company.  The swift hop of the paper reminded him she was gone. 
+But he had been with her.  He wanted everything to stand still,
+so that he could be with her again.
+
+The days passed, the weeks.  But everything seemed to have fused,
+gone into a conglomerated mass.  He could not tell one day
+from another, one week from another, hardly one place from another. 
+Nothing was distinct or distinguishable.  Often he lost himself
+for an hour at a time, could not remember what he had done.
+
+One evening he came home late to his lodging.  The fire was
+burning low; everybody was in bed.  He threw on some more coal,
+glanced at the table, and decided he wanted no supper.  Then he
+sat down in the arm-chair.  It was perfectly still.  He did not
+know anything, yet he saw the dim smoke wavering up the chimney. 
+Presently two mice came out, cautiously, nibbling the fallen crumbs. 
+He watched them as it were from a long way off.  The church clock
+struck two.  Far away he could hear the sharp clinking of the trucks
+on the railway.  No, it was not they that were far away.  They were
+there in their places.  But where was he himself?
+
+The time passed.  The two mice, careering wildly, scampered cheekily
+over his slippers.  He had not moved a muscle.  He did not want
+to move.  He was not thinking of anything.  It was easier so. 
+There was no wrench of knowing anything.  Then, from time to time,
+some other consciousness, working mechanically, flashed into
+sharp phrases.
+
+"What am I doing?"
+
+And out of the semi-intoxicated trance came the answer:
+
+"Destroying myself."
+
+Then a dull, live feeling, gone in an instant, told him that it
+was wrong.  After a while, suddenly came the question:
+
+"Why wrong?"
+
+Again there was no answer, but a stroke of hot stubbornness
+inside his chest resisted his own annihilation.
+
+There was a sound of a heavy cart clanking down the road. 
+Suddenly the electric light went out; there was a bruising thud
+in the penny-in-the-slot meter.  He did not stir, but sat gazing
+in front of him.  Only the mice had scuttled, and the fire glowed red
+in the dark room.
+
+Then, quite mechanically and more distinctly, the conversation
+began again inside him.
+
+"She's dead.  What was it all for--her struggle?"
+
+That was his despair wanting to go after her.
+
+"You're alive."
+
+"She's not."
+
+"She is--in you."
+
+Suddenly he felt tired with the burden of it.
+
+"You've got to keep alive for her sake," said his will in him.
+
+Something felt sulky, as if it would not rouse.
+
+"You've got to carry forward her living, and what she had done,
+go on with it."
+
+But he did not want to.  He wanted to give up.
+
+"But you can go on with your painting," said the will in him. 
+"Or else you can beget children.  They both carry on her effort."
+
+"Painting is not living."
+
+"Then live."
+
+"Marry whom?" came the sulky question.
+
+"As best you can."
+
+"Miriam?"
+
+But he did not trust that.
+
+He rose suddenly, went straight to bed.  When he got inside
+his bedroom and closed the door, he stood with clenched fist.
+
+"Mater, my dear---" he began, with the whole force of his soul. 
+Then he stopped.  He would not say it.  He would not admit that he
+wanted to die, to have done.  He would not own that life
+had beaten him, or that death had beaten him.  Going straight to bed,
+he slept at once, abandoning himself to the sleep.
+
+So the weeks went on.  Always alone, his soul oscillated,
+first on the side of death, then on the side of life, doggedly. 
+The real agony was that he had nowhere to go, nothing to do,
+nothing to say, and WAS nothing himself.  Sometimes he ran down
+the streets as if he were mad:  sometimes he was mad; things weren't
+there, things were there.  It made him pant.  Sometimes he stood
+before the bar of the public-house where he called for a drink. 
+Everything suddenly stood back away from him.  He saw the face
+of the barmaid, the gobbling drinkers, his own glass on the slopped,
+mahogany board, in the distance.  There was something between him
+and them.  He could not get into touch.  He did not want them;
+he did not want his drink.  Turning abruptly, he went out. 
+On the threshold he stood and looked at the lighted street. 
+But he was not of it or in it.  Something separated him. 
+Everything went on there below those lamps, shut away from him. 
+He could not get at them.  He felt he couldn't touch the lamp-posts,
+not if he reached.  Where could he go?  There was nowhere to go,
+neither back into the inn, or forward anywhere.  He felt stifled. 
+There was nowhere for him.  The stress grew inside him; he felt he
+should smash.
+
+"I mustn't," he said; and, turning blindly, he went in and drank. 
+Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it made him worse. 
+He ran down the road.  For ever restless, he went here, there,
+everywhere.  He determined to work.  But when he had made six strokes,
+he loathed the pencil violently, got up, and went away, hurried off
+to a club where he could play cards or billiards, to a place where he
+could flirt with a barmaid who was no more to him than the brass
+pump-handle she drew.
+
+He was very thin and lantern-jawed.  He dared not meet his
+own eyes in the mirror; he never looked at himself.  He wanted
+to get away from himself, but there was nothing to get hold of. 
+In despair he thought of Miriam.  Perhaps--perhaps---?
+
+Then, happening to go into the Unitarian Church one Sunday evening,
+when they stood up to sing the second hymn he saw her before him. 
+The light glistened on her lower lip as she sang.  She looked
+as if she had got something, at any rate:  some hope in heaven,
+if not in earth.  Her comfort and her life seemed in the after-world.
+A warm, strong feeling for her came up.  She seemed
+to yearn, as she sang, for the mystery and comfort. 
+He put his hope in her.  He longed for the sermon to be over,
+to speak to her.
+
+The throng carried her out just before him.  He could nearly
+touch her.  She did not know he was there.  He saw the brown,
+humble nape of her neck under its black curls.  He would leave
+himself to her.  She was better and bigger than he.  He would depend
+on her.
+
+She went wandering, in her blind way, through the little throngs
+of people outside the church.  She always looked so lost and out of
+place among people.  He went forward and put his hand on her arm. 
+She started violently.  Her great brown eyes dilated in fear,
+then went questioning at the sight of him.  He shrank slightly
+from her.
+
+"I didn't know---" she faltered.
+
+"Nor I," he said.
+
+He looked away.  His sudden, flaring hope sank again.
+
+"What are you doing in town?" he asked.
+
+"I'm staying at Cousin Anne's."
+
+"Ha!  For long?"
+
+"No; only till to-morrow."
+
+"Must you go straight home?"
+
+She looked at him, then hid her face under her hat-brim.
+
+"No," she said--"no; it's not necessary."
+
+He turned away, and she went with him.  They threaded
+through the throng of church people.  The organ was still sounding
+in St. Mary's.  Dark figures came through the lighted doors;
+people were coming down the steps.  The large coloured windows glowed
+up in the night.  The church was like a great lantern suspended. 
+They went down Hollow Stone, and he took the car for the Bridges.
+
+"You will just have supper with me," he said:  "then I'll
+bring you back."
+
+"Very well," she replied, low and husky.
+
+They scarcely spoke while they were on the car.  The Trent
+ran dark and full under the bridge.  Away towards Colwick all was
+black night.  He lived down Holme Road, on the naked edge of the town,
+facing across the river meadows towards Sneinton Hermitage and the
+steep scrap of Colwick Wood.  The floods were out.  The silent
+water and the darkness spread away on their left.  Almost afraid,
+they hurried along by the houses.
+
+Supper was laid.  He swung the curtain over the window. 
+There was a bowl of freesias and scarlet anemones on the table. 
+She bent to them.  Still touching them with her finger-tips, she looked
+up at him, saying:
+
+"Aren't they beautiful?"
+
+"Yes," he said.  "What will you drink--coffee?"
+
+"I should like it," she said.
+
+"Then excuse me a moment."
+
+He went out to the kitchen.
+
+Miriam took off her things and looked round.  It was a bare,
+severe room.  Her photo, Clara's, Annie's, were on the wall. 
+She looked on the drawing-board to see what he was doing. 
+There were only a few meaningless lines.  She looked to see
+what books he was reading.  Evidently just an ordinary novel. 
+The letters in the rack she saw were from Annie, Arthur, and from
+some man or other she did not know.  Everything he had touched,
+everything that was in the least personal to him, she examined
+with lingering absorption.  He had been gone from her for so long,
+she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was now. 
+But there was not much in the room to help her.  It only made her feel
+rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless.
+
+She was curiously examining a sketch-book when he returned
+with the coffee.
+
+"There's nothing new in it," he said, "and nothing
+very interesting."
+
+He put down the tray, and went to look over her shoulder. 
+She turned the pages slowly, intent on examining everything.
+
+"H'm!" he said, as she paused at a sketch.  "I'd forgotten that. 
+It's not bad, is it?"
+
+"No," she said.  "I don't quite understand it."
+
+He took the book from her and went through it.  Again he made
+a curious sound of surprise and pleasure.
+
+"There's some not bad stuff in there," he said.
+
+"Not at all bad," she answered gravely.
+
+He felt again her interest in his work.  Or was it for himself? 
+Why was she always most interested in him as he appeared in his work?
+
+They sat down to supper.
+
+"By the way," he said, "didn't I hear something about your
+earning your own living?"
+
+"Yes," she replied, bowing her dark head over her cup. 
+"And what of it?"
+
+"I'm merely going to the farming college at Broughton for
+three months, and I shall probably be kept on as a teacher there."
+
+"I say--that sounds all right for you!  You always wanted
+to be independent."
+
+"Yes.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"I only knew last week."
+
+"But I heard a month ago," he said.
+
+"Yes; but nothing was settled then."
+
+"I should have thought," he said, "you'd have told me you
+were trying."
+
+She ate her food in the deliberate, constrained way,
+almost as if she recoiled a little from doing anything so publicly,
+that he knew so well.
+
+"I suppose you're glad," he said.
+
+"Very glad."
+
+"Yes--it will be something."
+
+He was rather disappointed.
+
+"I think it will be a great deal," she said, almost haughtily,
+resentfully.
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"Why do you think it won't?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't think it won't be a great deal.  Only you'll find
+earning your own living isn't everything."
+
+"No," she said, swallowing with difficulty; "I don't suppose
+it is."
+
+"I suppose work CAN be nearly everything to a man," he said,
+"though it isn't to me.  But a woman only works with a part of
+herself.  The real and vital part is covered up."
+
+"But a man can give ALL himself to work?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, practically."
+
+"And a woman only the unimportant part of herself?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+She looked up at him, and her eyes dilated with anger.
+
+"Then," she said, "if it's true, it's a great shame."
+
+"It is.  But I don't know everything," he answered.
+
+After supper they drew up to the fire.  He swung her a
+chair facing him, and they sat down.  She was wearing a dress
+of dark claret colour, that suited her dark complexion and her
+large features.  Still, the curls were fine and free, but her face
+was much older, the brown throat much thinner.  She seemed old
+to him, older than Clara.  Her bloom of youth had quickly gone. 
+A sort of stiffness, almost of woodenness, had come upon her. 
+She meditated a little while, then looked at him.
+
+"And how are things with you?" she asked.
+
+"About all right," he answered.
+
+She looked at him, waiting.
+
+"Nay," she said, very low.
+
+Her brown, nervous hands were clasped over her knee.  They had
+still the lack of confidence or repose, the almost hysterical look. 
+He winced as he saw them.  Then he laughed mirthlessly.  She put
+her fingers between her lips.  His slim, black, tortured body lay
+quite still in the chair.  She suddenly took her finger from her
+mouth and looked at him.
+
+"And you have broken off with Clara?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His body lay like an abandoned thing, strewn in the chair.
+
+"You know," she said, "I think we ought to be married."
+
+He opened his eyes for the first time since many months,
+and attended to her with respect.
+
+"Why?" he said.
+
+"See," she said, "how you waste yourself!  You might be ill,
+you might die, and I never know--be no more then than if I had never
+known you."
+
+"And if we married?" he asked.
+
+"At any rate, I could prevent you wasting yourself and being
+a prey to other women--like--like Clara."
+
+"A prey?" he repeated, smiling.
+
+She bowed her head in silence.  He lay feeling his despair
+come up again.
+
+"I'm not sure," he said slowly, "that marriage would be much good."
+
+"I only think of you," she replied.
+
+"I know you do.  But--you love me so much, you want to put me
+in your pocket.  And I should die there smothered."
+
+She bent her head, put her fingers between her lips,
+while the bitterness surged up in her heart.
+
+"And what will you do otherwise?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know--go on, I suppose.  Perhaps I shall soon go abroad."
+
+The despairing doggedness in his tone made her go on her
+knees on the rug before the fire, very near to him.  There she
+crouched as if she were crushed by something, and could not raise
+her head.  His hands lay quite inert on the arms of his chair. 
+She was aware of them.  She felt that now he lay at her mercy. 
+If she could rise, take him, put her arms round him, and say,
+"You are mine," then he would leave himself to her.  But dare she? 
+She could easily sacrifice herself.  But dare she assert herself? 
+She was aware of his dark-clothed, slender body, that seemed
+one stroke of life, sprawled in the chair close to her.  But no;
+she dared not put her arms round it, take it up, and say, "It is mine,
+this body.  Leave it to me."  And she wanted to.  It called to all her
+woman's instinct.  But she crouched, and dared not.  She was afraid
+he would not let her.  She was afraid it was too much.  It lay there,
+his body, abandoned.  She knew she ought to take it up and claim it,
+and claim every right to it.  But--could she do it?  Her impotence
+before him, before the strong demand of some unknown thing in him,
+was her extremity.  Her hands fluttered; she half-lifted her head. 
+Her eyes, shuddering, appealing, gone, almost distracted, pleaded to
+him suddenly.  His heart caught with pity.  He took her hands, drew her
+to him, and comforted her.
+
+"Will you have me, to marry me?" he said very low.
+
+Oh, why did not he take her?  Her very soul belonged to him. 
+Why would he not take what was his?  She had borne so long
+the cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him. 
+Now he was straining her again.  It was too much for her. 
+She drew back her head, held his face between her hands, and looked
+him in the eyes.  No, he was hard.  He wanted something else. 
+She pleaded to him with all her love not to make it her choice. 
+She could not cope with it, with him, she knew not with what.  But it
+strained her till she felt she would break.
+
+"Do you want it?" she asked, very gravely.
+
+"Not much," he replied, with pain.
+
+She turned her face aside; then, raising herself with dignity,
+she took his head to her bosom, and rocked him softly.  She was
+not to have him, then!  So she could comfort him.  She put her
+fingers through his hair.  For her, the anguished sweetness of
+self-sacrifice.  For him, the hate and misery of another failure. 
+He could not bear it--that breast which was warm and which cradled
+him without taking the burden of him.  So much he wanted to rest
+on her that the feint of rest only tortured him.  He drew away.
+
+"And without marriage we can do nothing?" he asked.
+
+His mouth was lifted from his teeth with pain.  She put her
+little finger between her lips.
+
+"No," she said, low and like the toll of a bell.  "No, I think not."
+
+It was the end then between them.  She could not take him
+and relieve him of the responsibility of himself.  She could only
+sacrifice herself to him--sacrifice herself every day, gladly. 
+And that he did not want.  He wanted her to hold him and say,
+with joy and authority:  "Stop all this restlessness and beating
+against death.  You are mine for a mate."  She had not the strength. 
+Or was it a mate she wanted? or did she want a Christ in him?
+
+He felt, in leaving her, he was defrauding her of life. 
+But he knew that, in staying, stilling the inner, desperate man,
+he was denying his own life.  And he did not hope to give life to her
+by denying his own.
+
+She sat very quiet.  He lit a cigarette.  The smoke
+went up from it, wavering.  He was thinking of his mother,
+and had forgotten Miriam.  She suddenly looked at him. 
+Her bitterness came surging up.  Her sacrifice, then, was useless. 
+He lay there aloof, careless about her.  Suddenly she saw
+again his lack of religion, his restless instability.  He would 
+destroy himself like a perverse child.  Well, then, he would!
+
+"I think I must go," she said softly.
+
+By her tone he knew she was despising him.  He rose quietly.
+
+"I'll come along with you," he answered.
+
+She stood before the mirror pinning on her hat.  How bitter,
+how unutterably bitter, it made her that he rejected her sacrifice! 
+Life ahead looked dead, as if the glow were gone out.  She bowed
+her face over the flowers--the freesias so sweet and spring-like,
+the scarlet anemones flaunting over the table.  It was like him
+to have those flowers.
+
+He moved about the room with a certain sureness of touch,
+swift and relentless and quiet.  She knew she could not cope with him. 
+He would escape like a weasel out of her hands.  Yet without him her
+life would trail on lifeless.  Brooding, she touched the flowers.
+
+"Have them!" he said; and he took them out of the jar,
+dripping as they were, and went quickly into the kitchen. 
+She waited for him, took the flowers, and they went out together,
+he talking, she feeling dead.
+
+She was going from him now.  In her misery she leaned against him
+as they sat on the car.  He was unresponsive.  Where would he go? 
+What would be the end of him?  She could not bear it, the vacant
+feeling where he should be.  He was so foolish, so wasteful,
+never at peace with himself.  And now where would he go? 
+And what did he care that he wasted her?  He had no religion;
+it was all for the moment's attraction that he cared, nothing else,
+nothing deeper.  Well, she would wait and see how it turned
+out with him.  When he had had enough he would give in and come
+to her.
+
+He shook hands and left her at the door of her cousin's house. 
+When he turned away he felt the last hold for him had gone.  The town,
+as he sat upon the car, stretched away over the bay of railway, a
+level fume of lights.  Beyond the town the country, little smouldering
+spots for more towns--the sea--the night--on and on!  And he had no
+place in it!  Whatever spot he stood on, there he stood alone. 
+From his breast, from his mouth, sprang the endless space, and it
+was there behind him, everywhere.  The people hurrying along the
+streets offered no obstruction to the void in which he found himself. 
+They were small shadows whose footsteps and voices could be heard,
+but in each of them the same night, the same silence.  He got off
+the car.  In the country all was dead still.  Little stars shone high up;
+little stars spread far away in the flood-waters, a firmament below. 
+Everywhere the vastness and terror of the immense night which is
+roused and stirred for a brief while by the day, but which returns,
+and will remain at last eternal, holding everything in its silence
+and its living gloom.  There was no Time, only Space.  Who could say
+his mother had lived and did not live?  She had been in one place,
+and was in another; that was all.  And his soul could not leave her, 
+wherever she was.  Now she was gone abroad into the night, and he 
+was with her still.  They were together.  But yet there was his body, 
+his chest, that leaned against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar. 
+They seemed something.  Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh,
+less than an ear of wheat lost in the field.  He could not bear it. 
+On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny
+a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not
+be extinct.  Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out,
+beyond stars and sun.  Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning
+round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a
+darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. 
+So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness,
+and yet not nothing.
+
+"Mother!" he whispered--"mother!"
+
+She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. 
+And she was gone, intermingled herself.  He wanted her to touch him,
+have him alongside with her.
+
+But no, he would not give in.  Turning sharply, he walked
+towards the city's gold phosphorescence.  His fists were shut,
+his mouth set fast.  He would not take that direction, to the
+darkness, to follow her.  He walked towards the faintly humming,
+glowing town, quickly.
+
+
+THE END
+
+You have reached the end of Project Gutenberg's edition of Sons and Lovers,
+by David Herbert Lawrence [D. H. Lawrence].
+
+