LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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