LITMIR.BIZ

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      “But she's nice, mother, she is! And not a bit common!”

      “I never suggested she was.”

      “But you seem to think she's—not as good as—She's better than ninety-nine folk out of a hundred, I tell you! She's BETTER, she is! She's fair, she's honest, she's straight! There isn't anything underhand or superior about her. Don't be mean about her!”

      Mrs. Morel flushed.

      “I am sure I am not mean about her. She may be quite as you say, but—”

      “You don't approve,” he finished.

      “And do you expect me to?” she answered coldly.

      “Yes!—yes!—if you'd anything about you, you'd be glad! Do you WANT to see her?”

      “I said I did.”

      “Then I'll bring her—shall I bring her here?”

      “You please yourself.”

      “Then I WILL bring her here—one Sunday—to tea. If you think a horrid thing about her, I shan't forgive you.”

      His mother laughed.

      “As if it would make any difference!” she said. He knew he had won.

      “Oh, but it feels so fine, when she's there! She's such a queen in her way.”

      Occasionally he still walked a little way from chapel with Miriam and Edgar. He did not go up to the farm. She, however, was very much the same with him, and he did not feel embarrassed in her presence. One evening she was alone when he accompanied her. They began by talking books: it was their unfailing topic. Mrs. Morel had said that his and Miriam's affair was like a fire fed on books—if there were no more volumes it would die out. Miriam, for her part, boasted that she could read him like a book, could place her finger any minute on the chapter and the line. He, easily taken in, believed that Miriam knew more about him than anyone else. So it pleased him to talk to her about himself, like the simplest egoist. Very soon the conversation drifted to his own doings. It flattered him immensely that he was of such supreme interest.

      “And what have you been doing lately?”

      “I—oh, not much! I made a sketch of Bestwood from the garden, that is nearly right at last. It's the hundredth try.”

      So they went on. Then she said:

      “You've not been out, then, lately?”

      “Yes; I went up Clifton Grove on Monday afternoon with Clara.”

      “It was not very nice weather,” said Miriam, “was it?”

      “But I wanted to go out, and it was all right. The Trent IS full.”

      “And did you go to Barton?” she asked.

      “No; we had tea in Clifton.”

      “DID you! That would be nice.”

      “It was! The jolliest old woman! She gave us several pompom dahlias, as pretty as you like.”

      Miriam bowed her head and brooded. He was quite unconscious of concealing anything from her.

      “What made her give them you?” she asked.

      He laughed.

      “Because she liked us—because we were jolly, I should think.”

      Miriam put her finger in her mouth.

      “Were you late home?” she asked.

      At last he resented her tone.

      “I caught the seven-thirty.”

      “Ha!”

      They walked on in silence, and he was angry.

      “And how IS Clara?” asked Miriam.

      “Quite all right, I think.”

      “That's good!” she said, with a tinge of irony. “By the way, what of her husband? One never hears anything of him.”

      “He's got some other woman, and is also quite all right,” he replied. “At least, so I think.”

      “I see—you don't know for certain. Don't you think a position like that is hard on a woman?”

      “Rottenly hard!”

      “It's so unjust!” said Miriam. “The man does as he likes—”

      “Then let the woman also,” he said.

      “How can she? And if she does, look at her position!”

      “What of it?”

      “Why, it's impossible! You don't understand what a woman forfeits—”

      “No, I don't. But if a woman's got nothing but her fair fame to feed on, why, it's thin tack, and a donkey would die of it!”

      So she understood his moral attitude, at least, and she knew he would act accordingly.

      She never asked him anything direct, but she got to know enough.

      Another day, when he saw Miriam, the conversation turned to marriage, then to Clara's marriage with Dawes.

      “You see,” he said, “she never knew the fearful importance of marriage. She thought it was all in the day's march—it would have to come—and Dawes—well, a good many women would have given their souls to get him; so why not him? Then she developed into the femme incomprise, and treated him badly, I'll bet my boots.”

      “And she left him because he didn't understand her?”

      “I suppose so. I suppose she had to. It isn't altogether a question of understanding; it's a question of living. With him, she was only half-alive; the rest was dormant, deadened. And the dormant woman was the femme incomprise, and she HAD to be awakened.”

      “And what about him.”

      “I don't know. I rather think he loves her as much as he can, but he's a fool.”

      “It was something like your mother and father,” said Miriam.

      “Yes; but my mother, I believe, got real joy and satisfaction out of my father at first. I believe she had a passion for him; that's why she stayed with him. After all, they were bound to each other.”

      “Yes,” said Miriam.

      “That's what one MUST HAVE, I think,” he continued—“the real, real flame of feeling through another person—once, only once, if it only lasts three months. See, my mother looks as if she'd HAD everything that was necessary for her living and developing. There's not a tiny bit of feeling of sterility about her.”

      “No,” said Miriam.

      “And with my father, at first, I'm sure she had the real thing. She knows; she has been there. You can feel it about her, and about him, and about hundreds of people you meet every day; and, once it has happened to you, you can go on with anything and ripen.”

      “What happened, exactly?” asked Miriam.

      “It's so hard to say, but the something big and intense that changes you when you really come together with somebody else. It almost seems to fertilise your soul and make it that you can go on and mature.”

      “And you think your mother had it with your father?”

      “Yes; and at the bottom she feels grateful to him for giving it her, even now, though they are miles apart.”

      “And you think Clara never had it?”

      “I'm sure.”

      Miriam pondered this. She saw what he was seeking—a sort of baptism of fire in passion, it seemed to her. She realised that he would never be satisfied till he had it. Perhaps it was essential to him, as to some men, to sow wild oats; and afterwards, when he was satisfied, he would

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