LITMIR.BIZ

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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,

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