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when she was flushed from the fire.
The dinner was a great success. Like a young husband, he carved. They talked all the time with unflagging zest. Then he wiped the dishes she had washed, and they went out down the fields. There was a bright little brook that ran into a bog at the foot of a very steep bank. Here they wandered, picking still a few marsh-marigolds and many big blue forget-me-nots. Then she sat on the bank with her hands full of flowers, mostly golden water-blobs. As she put her face down into the marigolds, it was all overcast with a yellow shine.
“Your face is bright,” he said, “like a transfiguration.”
She looked at him, questioning. He laughed pleadingly to her, laying his hands on hers. Then he kissed her fingers, then her face.
The world was all steeped in sunshine, and quite still, yet not asleep, but quivering with a kind of expectancy.
“I have never seen anything more beautiful than this,” he said. He held her hand fast all the time.
“And the water singing to itself as it runs—do you love it?” She looked at him full of love. His eyes were very dark, very bright.
“Don't you think it's a great day?” he asked.
She murmured her assent. She WAS happy, and he saw it.
“And our day—just between us,” he said.
They lingered a little while. Then they stood up upon the sweet thyme, and he looked down at her simply.
“Will you come?” he asked.
They went back to the house, hand in hand, in silence. The chickens came scampering down the path to her. He locked the door, and they had the little house to themselves.
He never forgot seeing her as she lay on the bed, when he was unfastening his collar. First he saw only her beauty, and was blind with it. She had the most beautiful body he had ever imagined. He stood unable to move or speak, looking at her, his face half-smiling with wonder. And then he wanted her, but as he went forward to her, her hands lifted in a little pleading movement, and he looked at her face, and stopped. Her big brown eyes were watching him, still and resigned and loving; she lay as if she had given herself up to sacrifice: there was her body for him; but the look at the back of her eyes, like a creature awaiting immolation, arrested him, and all his blood fell back.
“You are sure you want me?” he asked, as if a cold shadow had come over him.
“Yes, quite sure.”
She was very quiet, very calm. She only realised that she was doing something for him. He could hardly bear it. She lay to be sacrificed for him because she loved him so much. And he had to sacrifice her. For a second, he wished he were sexless or dead. Then he shut his eyes again to her, and his blood beat back again.
And afterwards he loved her—loved her to the last fibre of his being. He loved her. But he wanted, somehow, to cry. There was something he could not bear for her sake. He stayed with her till quite late at night. As he rode home he felt that he was finally initiated. He was a youth no longer. But why had he the dull pain in his soul? Why did the thought of death, the after-life, seem so sweet and consoling?
He spent the week with Miriam, and wore her out with his passion before it was gone. He had always, almost wilfully, to put her out of count, and act from the brute strength of his own feelings. And he could not do it often, and there remained afterwards always the sense of failure and of death. If he were really with her, he had to put aside himself and his desire. If he would have her, he had to put her aside.
“When I come to you,” he asked her, his eyes dark with pain and shame, “you don't really want me, do you?”
“Ah, yes!” she replied quickly.
He looked at her.
“Nay,” he said.
She began to tremble.
“You see,” she said, taking his face and shutting it out against her shoulder—“you see—as we are—how can I get used to you? It would come all right if we were married.”
He lifted her head, and looked at her.
“You mean, now, it is always too much shock?”
“Yes—and—”
“You are always clenched against me.”
She was trembling with agitation.
“You see,” she said, “I'm not used to the thought—”
“You are lately,” he said.
“But all my life. Mother said to me: 'There is one thing in marriage that is always dreadful, but you have to bear it.' And I believed it.”
“And still believe it,” he said.
“No!” she cried hastily. “I believe, as you do, that loving, even in THAT way, is the high-water mark of living.”
“That doesn't alter the fact that you never want it.”
“No,” she said, taking his head in her arms and rocking in despair. “Don't say so! You don't understand.” She rocked with pain. “Don't I want your children?”
“But not me.”
“How can you say so? But we must be married to have children—”
“Shall we be married, then? I want you to have my children.”
He kissed her hand reverently. She pondered sadly, watching him.
“We are too young,” she said at length.
“Twenty-four and twenty-three—”
“Not yet,” she pleaded, as she rocked herself in distress.
“When you will,” he said.
She bowed her head gravely. The tone of hopelessness in which he said these things grieved her deeply. It had always been a failure between them. Tacitly, she acquiesced in what he felt.
And after a week of love he said to his mother suddenly one Sunday night, just as they were going to bed:
“I shan't go so much to Miriam's, mother.”
She was surprised, but she would not ask him anything.
“You please yourself,” she said.
So he went to bed. But there was a new quietness about him which she had wondered at. She almost guessed. She would leave him alone, however. Precipitation might spoil things. She watched him in his loneliness, wondering where he would end. He was sick, and much too quiet for him. There was a perpetual little knitting of his brows, such as she had seen when he was a small baby, and which had been gone for many years. Now it was the same again. And she could do nothing for him. He had to go on alone, make his own way.
He continued faithful to Miriam. For one day he had loved her utterly. But it never came again. The sense of failure grew stronger. At first it was only a sadness. Then he began to feel he could not go on. He wanted to run, to go abroad, anything. Gradually he ceased to ask her to have him. Instead of drawing them together, it put them apart. And then he realised, consciously, that it was no good. It was useless trying: it would never be a success between them.
For some months he had seen very little of Clara. They had occasionally walked out for half an hour at dinner-time. But he always reserved himself for Miriam. With Clara, however, his brow cleared, and he was gay again. She treated him indulgently, as if he were a child. He thought he did not mind. But deep below the surface it piqued him.
Sometimes Miriam said:
“What about Clara? I hear nothing of her lately.”
“I walked with her about twenty minutes yesterday,” he replied.
“And what did she talk about?”
“I don't know. I suppose I did all the jawing—I usually do. I think