LITMIR.BIZ

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full of pain, then continued slowly to stroke her lips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as she smelled it, was so much kinder than he; it almost made her cry.

      “You wheedle the soul out of things,” he said. “I would never wheedle—at any rate, I'd go straight.”

      He scarcely knew what he was saying. These things came from him mechanically. She looked at him. His body seemed one weapon, firm and hard against her.

      “You're always begging things to love you,” he said, “as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them—”

      Rhythmically, Miriam was swaying and stroking the flower with her mouth, inhaling the scent which ever after made her shudder as it came to her nostrils.

      “You don't want to love—your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren't positive, you're negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you've got a shortage somewhere.”

      She was stunned by his cruelty, and did not hear. He had not the faintest notion of what he was saying. It was as if his fretted, tortured soul, run hot by thwarted passion, jetted off these sayings like sparks from electricity. She did not grasp anything he said. She only sat crouched beneath his cruelty and his hatred of her. She never realised in a flash. Over everything she brooded and brooded.

      After tea he stayed with Edgar and the brothers, taking no notice of Miriam. She, extremely unhappy on this looked-for holiday, waited for him. And at last he yielded and came to her. She was determined to track this mood of his to its origin. She counted it not much more than a mood.

      “Shall we go through the wood a little way?” she asked him, knowing he never refused a direct request.

      They went down to the warren. On the middle path they passed a trap, a narrow horseshoe hedge of small fir-boughs, baited with the guts of a rabbit. Paul glanced at it frowning. She caught his eye.

      “Isn't it dreadful?” she asked.

      “I don't know! Is it worse than a weasel with its teeth in a rabbit's throat? One weasel or many rabbits? One or the other must go!”

      He was taking the bitterness of life badly. She was rather sorry for him.

      “We will go back to the house,” he said. “I don't want to walk out.”

      They went past the lilac-tree, whose bronze leaf-buds were coming unfastened. Just a fragment remained of the haystack, a monument squared and brown, like a pillar of stone. There was a little bed of hay from the last cutting.

      “Let us sit here a minute,” said Miriam.

      He sat down against his will, resting his back against the hard wall of hay. They faced the amphitheatre of round hills that glowed with sunset, tiny white farms standing out, the meadows golden, the woods dark and yet luminous, tree-tops folded over tree-tops, distinct in the distance. The evening had cleared, and the east was tender with a magenta flush under which the land lay still and rich.

      “Isn't it beautiful?” she pleaded.

      But he only scowled. He would rather have had it ugly just then.

      At that moment a big bull-terrier came rushing up, open-mouthed, pranced his two paws on the youth's shoulders, licking his face. Paul drew back, laughing. Bill was a great relief to him. He pushed the dog aside, but it came leaping back.

      “Get out,” said the lad, “or I'll dot thee one.”

      But the dog was not to be pushed away. So Paul had a little battle with the creature, pitching poor Bill away from him, who, however, only floundered tumultuously back again, wild with joy. The two fought together, the man laughing grudgingly, the dog grinning all over. Miriam watched them. There was something pathetic about the man. He wanted so badly to love, to be tender. The rough way he bowled the dog over was really loving. Bill got up, panting with happiness, his brown eyes rolling in his white face, and lumbered back again. He adored Paul. The lad frowned.

      “Bill, I've had enough o' thee,” he said.

      But the dog only stood with two heavy paws, that quivered with love, upon his thigh, and flickered a red tongue at him. He drew back.

      “No,” he said—“no—I've had enough.”

      And in a minute the dog trotted off happily, to vary the fun.

      He remained staring miserably across at the hills, whose still beauty he begrudged. He wanted to go and cycle with Edgar. Yet he had not the courage to leave Miriam.

      “Why are you sad?” she asked humbly.

      “I'm not sad; why should I be,” he answered. “I'm only normal.”

      She wondered why he always claimed to be normal when he was disagreeable.

      “But what is the matter?” she pleaded, coaxing him soothingly.

      “Nothing!”

      “Nay!” she murmured.

      He picked up a stick and began to stab the earth with it.

      “You'd far better not talk,” he said.

      “But I wish to know—” she replied.

      He laughed resentfully.

      “You always do,” he said.

      “It's not fair to me,” she murmured.

      He thrust, thrust, thrust at the ground with the pointed stick, digging up little clods of earth as if he were in a fever of irritation. She gently and firmly laid her band on his wrist.

      “Don't!” she said. “Put it away.”

      He flung the stick into the currant-bushes, and leaned back. Now he was bottled up.

      “What is it?” she pleaded softly.

      He lay perfectly still, only his eyes alive, and they full of torment.

      “You know,” he said at length, rather wearily—“you know—we'd better break off.”

      It was what she dreaded. Swiftly everything seemed to darken before her eyes.

      “Why!” she murmured. “What has happened?”

      “Nothing has happened. We only realise where we are. It's no good—”

      She waited in silence, sadly, patiently. It was no good being impatient with him. At any rate, he would tell her now what ailed him.

      “We agreed on friendship,” he went on in a dull, monotonous voice. “How often HAVE we agreed for friendship! And yet—it neither stops there, nor gets anywhere else.”

      He was silent again. She brooded. What did he mean? He was so wearying. There was something he would not yield. Yet she must be patient with him.

      “I can only give friendship—it's all I'm capable of—it's a flaw in my make-up. The thing overbalances to one side—I hate a toppling balance. Let us have done.”

      There was warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.

      “But what has happened?” she said.

      “Nothing—it's all in myself—it only comes out just now. We're always like this towards Easter-time.”

      He grovelled so helplessly, she pitied him. At least she never floundered in such a pitiable way. After all, it was he who was chiefly humiliated.

      “What do you want?” she asked him.

      “Why—I mustn't come often—that's all. Why should I monopolise you when

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