was, she stimulated him into appreciating things
thus, and then they lived for her. She seemed to need things kindling in
her imagination or in her soul before she felt she had them. And she
was cut off from ordinary life by her religious intensity which made
the world for her either a nunnery garden or a paradise, where sin and
knowledge were not, or else an ugly, cruel thing.

So it was in this atmosphere of subtle intimacy, this meeting in their
common feeling for something in Nature, that their love started.

Personally, he was a long time before he realized her. For ten months he
had to stay at home after his illness. For a while he went to Skegness
with his mother, and was perfectly happy. But even from the seaside he
wrote long letters to Mrs. Leivers about the shore and the sea. And he
brought back his beloved sketches of the flat Lincoln coast, anxious
for them to see. Almost they would interest the Leivers more than they
interested his mother. It was not his art Mrs. Morel cared about; it
was himself and his achievement. But Mrs. Leivers and her children were
almost his disciples. They kindled him and made him glow to his work,
whereas his mother's influence was to make him quietly determined,
patient, dogged, unwearied.

He soon was friends with the boys, whose rudeness was only superficial.
They had all, when they could trust themselves, a strange gentleness and
lovableness.

"Will you come with me on to the fallow?" asked Edgar, rather
hesitatingly.

Paul went joyfully, and spent the afternoon helping to hoe or to single
turnips with his friend. He used to lie with the three brothers in
the hay piled up in the barn and tell them about Nottingham and about
Jordan's. In return, they taught him to milk, and let him do little
jobs--chopping hay or pulping turnips--just as much as he liked. At
midsummer he worked all through hay-harvest with them, and then he loved
them. The family was so cut off from the world actually. They seemed,
somehow, like "_les derniers fils d'une race epuisee_". Though the lads
were strong and healthy, yet they had all that over-sensitiveness and
hanging-back which made them so lonely, yet also such close, delicate
friends once their intimacy was won. Paul loved them dearly, and they
him.

Miriam came later. But he had come into her life before she made any
mark on his. One dull afternoon, when the men were on the land and the
rest at school, only Miriam and her mother at home,