LITMIR.BIZ

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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 he 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

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