Clara was rather quiet and uncomfortable. As they walked along, he said:
“You don't feel criminal, do you?”
She looked at him with startled grey eyes.
“Criminal!” she said. “No.”
“But you seem to feel you have done a wrong?”
“No,” she said. “I only think, 'If they knew!'”
“If they knew, they'd cease to understand. As it is, they do understand, and they like it. What do they matter? Here, with only the trees and me, you don't feel not the least bit wrong, do you?”
He took her by the arm, held her facing him, holding her eyes with his. Something fretted him.
“Not sinners, are we?” he said, with an uneasy little frown.
“No,” she replied.
He kissed her, laughing.
“You like your little bit of guiltiness, I believe,” he said. “I believe Eve enjoyed it, when she went cowering out of Paradise.”
But there was a certain glow and quietness about her that made him glad. When he was alone in the railway-carriage, he found himself tumultuously happy, and the people exceedingly nice, and the night lovely, and everything good.
Mrs. Morel was sitting reading when he got home. Her health was not good now, and there had come that ivory pallor into her face which he never noticed, and which afterwards he never forgot. She did not mention her own ill-health to him. After all, she thought, it was not much.
“You are late!” she said, looking at him.
His eyes were shining; his face seemed to glow. He smiled to her.
“Yes; I've been down Clifton Grove with Clara.”
His mother looked at him again.
“But won't people talk?” she said.
“Why? They know she's a suffragette, and so on. And what if they do talk!”
“Of course, there may be nothing wrong in it,” said his mother. “But you know what folks are, and if once she gets talked about—”
“Well, I can't help it. Their jaw isn't so almighty important, after all.”
“I think you ought to consider HER.”
“So I DO! What can people say?—that we take a walk together. I believe you're jealous.”
“You know I should be GLAD if she weren't a married woman.”
“Well, my dear, she lives separate from her husband, and talks on platforms; so she's already singled out from the sheep, and, as far as I can see, hasn't much to lose. No; her life's nothing to her, so what's the worth of nothing? She goes with me—it becomes something. Then she must pay—we both must pay! Folk are so frightened of paying; they'd rather starve and die.”
“Very well, my son. We'll see how it will end.”
“Very well, my mother. I'll abide by the end.”
“We'll see!”
“And she's—she's AWFULLY nice, mother; she is really! You don't know!”
“That's not the same as marrying her.”
“It's perhaps better.”
There was silence for a while. He wanted to ask his mother something, but was afraid.
“Should you like to know her?” He hesitated.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Morel coolly. “I should like to know what she's like.”
“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