LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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