Chapter 11 - Page 2

any reproach from a woman; for a woman was like their mother, and they
were full of the sense of their mother. They preferred themselves
to suffer the misery of celibacy, rather than risk the other person.

He went back to her. Something in her, when he looked at her,
brought the tears almost to his eyes. One day he stood behind her
as she sang. Annie was playing a song on the piano. As Miriam sang
her mouth seemed hopeless. She sang like a nun singing to heaven.
It reminded him so much of the mouth and eyes of one who sings
beside a Botticelli Madonna, so spiritual. Again, hot as steel,
came up the pain in him. Why must he ask her for the other thing?
Why was there his blood battling with her? If only he could have been
always gentle, tender with her, breathing with her the atmosphere
of reverie and religious dreams, he would give his right hand.
It was not fair to hurt her. There seemed an eternal maidenhood
about her; and when he thought of her mother, he saw the great
brown eyes of a maiden who was nearly scared and shocked out of her
virgin maidenhood, but not quite, in spite of her seven children.
They had been born almost leaving her out of count, not of her,
but upon her. So she could never let them go, because she never had
possessed them.

Mrs. Morel saw him going again frequently to Miriam,
and was astonished. He said nothing to his mother. He did not explain
nor excuse himself. If he came home late, and she reproached him,
he frowned and turned on her in an overbearing way:

"I shall come home when I like," he said; "I am old enough."

"Must she keep you till this time?"

"It is I who stay," he answered.

"And she lets you? But very well," she said.

And she went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for him;
but she lay listening until he came, often long after.
It was a great bitterness to her that he had gone back to Miriam.
She recognised, however, the uselessness of any further interference.
He went to Willey Farm as a man now, not as a youth. She had
no right over him. There was a coldness between him and her.
He hardly told her anything. Discarded, she waited on him, cooked for
him still, and loved to slave for him; but her face closed again
like a mask. There was nothing for her to do now but the housework;
for all the rest he had gone to Miriam. She could not forgive him.
Miriam killed the joy and the warmth in him. He had been such a
jolly lad, and full of the warmest affection; now he grew colder,
more and more irritable and gloomy. It reminded her of William;
but Paul was worse. He did things with more intensity, and more
realisation of what he was about. His mother knew how he was
suffering for want of a woman, and she saw him going to