LITMIR.BIZ

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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 he 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.

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