And he had a great tenderness for Miriam. Always, she was sad, dreaming her religion; and he was nearly a religion to her. He could not bear to fail her. It would all come right if they tried.
He looked round. A good many of the nicest men he knew were like himself, bound in by their own virginity, which they could not break out of. They were so sensitive to their women that they would go without them for ever rather than do them a hurt, an injustice. Being the sons of mothers whose husbands had blundered rather brutally through their feminine sanctities, they were themselves too diffident and shy. They could easier deny themselves than incur 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 Miriam. If he had made up his mind, nothing on earth would alter him. Mrs. Morel was tired. She began to give up at last; she had finished. She was in the way.
He went on determinedly. He realised more or less what his mother felt. It only hardened his soul. He made himself callous towards her; but it was like being callous to his own health. It undermined him quickly; yet he persisted.
He lay back in the rocking-chair at Willey Farm one evening. He had been talking to Miriam for some weeks, but had not come to the point. Now he said suddenly:
“I am twenty-four, almost.”
She had been brooding. She looked up at him suddenly in surprise.
“Yes. What makes you say it?”
There was something in the charged atmosphere that she dreaded.
“Sir Thomas More says one can marry at twenty-four.”
She laughed quaintly, saying:
“Does it need Sir Thomas More's sanction?”
“No; but one ought to marry about then.”
“Ay,” she answered broodingly; and she waited.
“I can't marry you,” he continued slowly, “not now, because we've no money, and they depend on me at home.”
She sat half-guessing what was coming.
“But I want to marry now—”
“You want to marry?” she repeated.
“A woman—you know what I mean.”
She was silent.
“Now, at last, I must,” he said.
“Ay,” she answered.
“And you love me?”
She laughed bitterly.
“Why are you ashamed of it,” he answered. “You wouldn't be ashamed before your God, why are you before people?”
“Nay,” she answered deeply, “I am not ashamed.”
“You are,” he replied bitterly; “and it's my fault. But you know I can't help being—as I am—don't you?”
“I know you can't help it,” she replied.
“I love you an awful lot—then there is something short.”
“Where?” she answered, looking at him.
“Oh, in me! It is I who ought to be ashamed—like a spiritual cripple. And I am ashamed. It is misery. Why is it?”
“I don't know,” replied Miriam.
“And I don't know,” he repeated. “Don't you think we have been too fierce in our what they call purity? Don't you think that to be so much afraid and averse is a sort of dirtiness?”
She looked at him with startled dark eyes.
“You recoiled away from anything of the sort, and I took the motion from you, and recoiled also, perhaps worse.”
There was silence in the room for some time.
“Yes,” she said, “it is so.”
“There is between us,” he said, “all these years of intimacy. I feel naked enough before you. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” she answered.
“And you love me?”
She laughed.
“Don't be bitter,” he pleaded.
She looked at him and was sorry for him; his eyes were dark with torture. She was sorry for him; it was worse for him to have this deflated love than for herself, who could never be properly mated. He was restless, for ever urging forward and trying to find a way out. He might do as he liked, and have what he liked of her.
“Nay,” she said softly, “I am not bitter.”
She