LITMIR.BIZ

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were together!” he pleaded.

      “Never!” she cried; “never! It has always been you fighting me off.”

      “Not always—not at first!” he pleaded.

      “Always, from the very beginning—always the same!”

      She had finished, but she had done enough. He sat aghast. He had wanted to say: “It has been good, but it is at an end.” And she—she whose love he had believed in when he had despised himself—denied that their love had ever been love. “He had always fought away from her?” Then it had been monstrous. There had never been anything really between them; all the time he had been imagining something where there was nothing. And she had known. She had known so much, and had told him so little. She had known all the time. All the time this was at the bottom of her!

      He sat silent in bitterness. At last the whole affair appeared in a cynical aspect to him. She had really played with him, not he with her. She had hidden all her condemnation from him, had flattered him, and despised him. She despised him now. He grew intellectual and cruel.

      “You ought to marry a man who worships you,” he said; “then you could do as you liked with him. Plenty of men will worship you, if you get on the private side of their natures. You ought to marry one such. They would never fight you off.”

      “Thank you!” she said. “But don't advise me to marry someone else any more. You've done it before.”

      “Very well,” he said; “I will say no more.”

      He sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of giving one. Their eight years of friendship and love, THE eight years of his life, were nullified.

      “When did you think of this?” she asked.

      “I thought definitely on Thursday night.”

      “I knew it was coming,” she said.

      That pleased him bitterly. “Oh, very well! If she knew then it doesn't come as a surprise to her,” he thought.

      “And have you said anything to Clara?” she asked.

      “No; but I shall tell her now.”

      There was a silence.

      “Do you remember the things you said this time last year, in my grandmother's house—nay last month even?”

      “Yes,” he said; “I do! And I meant them! I can't help that it's failed.”

      “It has failed because you want something else.”

      “It would have failed whether or not. YOU never believed in me.”

      She laughed strangely.

      He sat in silence. He was full of a feeling that she had deceived him. She had despised him when he thought she worshipped him. She had let him say wrong things, and had not contradicted him. She had let him fight alone. But it stuck in his throat that she had despised him whilst he thought she worshipped him. She should have told him when she found fault with him. She had not played fair. He hated her. All these years she had treated him as if he were a hero, and thought of him secretly as an infant, a foolish child. Then why had she left the foolish child to his folly? His heart was hard against her.

      She sat full of bitterness. She had known—oh, well she had known! All the time he was away from her she had summed him up, seen his littleness, his meanness, and his folly. Even she had guarded her soul against him. She was not overthrown, not prostrated, not even much hurt. She had known. Only why, as he sat there, had he still this strange dominance over her? His very movements fascinated her as if she were hypnotised by him. Yet he was despicable, false, inconsistent, and mean. Why this bondage for her? Why was it the movement of his arm stirred her as nothing else in the world could? Why was she fastened to him? Why, even now, if he looked at her and commanded her, would she have to obey? She would obey him in his trifling commands. But once he was obeyed, then she had him in her power, she knew, to lead him where she would. She was sure of herself. Only, this new influence! Ah, he was not a man! He was a baby that cries for the newest toy. And all the attachment of his soul would not keep him. Very well, he would have to go. But he would come back when he had tired of his new sensation.

      He hacked at the earth till she was fretted to death. She rose. He sat flinging lumps of earth in the stream.

      “We will go and have tea here?” he asked.

      “Yes,” she answered.

      They chattered over irrelevant subjects during tea. He held forth on the love of ornament—the cottage parlour moved him thereto—and its connection with aesthetics. She was cold and quiet. As they walked home, she asked:

      “And we shall not see each other?”

      “No—or rarely,” he answered.

      “Nor write?” she asked, almost sarcastically.

      “As you will,” he answered. “We're not strangers—never should be, whatever happened. I will write to you now and again. You please yourself.”

      “I see!” she answered cuttingly.

      But he was at that stage at which nothing else hurts. He had made a great cleavage in his life. He had had a great shock when she had told him their love had been always a conflict. Nothing more mattered. If it never had been much, there was no need to make a fuss that it was ended.

      He left her at the lane-end. As she went home, solitary, in her new frock, having her people to face at the other end, he stood still with shame and pain in the highroad, thinking of the suffering he caused her.

      In the reaction towards restoring his self-esteem, he went into the Willow Tree for a drink. There were four girls who had been out for the day, drinking a modest glass of port. They had some chocolates on the table. Paul sat near with his whisky. He noticed the girls whispering and nudging. Presently one, a bonny dark hussy, leaned to him and said:

      “Have a chocolate?”

      The others laughed loudly at her impudence.

      “All right,” said Paul. “Give me a hard one—nut. I don't like creams.”

      “Here you are, then,” said the girl; “here's an almond for you.”

      She held the sweet between her fingers. He opened his mouth. She popped it in, and blushed.

      “You ARE nice!” he said.

      “Well,” she answered, “we thought you looked overcast, and they dared me offer you a chocolate.”

      “I don't mind if I have another—another sort,” he said.

      And presently they were all laughing together.

      It was nine o'clock when he got home, falling dark. He entered the house in silence. His mother, who had been waiting, rose anxiously.

      “I told her,” he said.

      “I'm glad,” replied the mother, with great relief.

      He hung up his cap wearily.

      “I said we'd have done altogether,” he said.

      “That's right, my son,” said the mother. “It's hard for her now, but best in the long run. I know. You weren't suited for her.”

      He laughed shakily as he sat down.

      “I've had such a lark with some girls in a pub,” he said.

      His mother looked at him. He had forgotten Miriam now. He told her about the girls in the Willow Tree. Mrs. Morel looked at him. It seemed unreal, his gaiety. At the back of it was too much horror and misery.

      “Now have some supper,” she said very gently.

      Afterwards he said wistfully:

      “She never thought she'd have me, mother, not from the first, and so she's not disappointed.”

      “I'm afraid,” said

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