"

And, folding him in her arms, she swayed slightly from side to side with
love, her face half lifted, her eyes half closed, her voice drenched
with love.

"Don't!" said the child, uneasy--"don't, Miriam!"

"Yes; you love me, don't you?" she murmured deep in her throat, almost
as if she were in a trance, and swaying also as if she were swooned in
an ecstasy of love.

"Don't!" repeated the child, a frown on his clear brow.

"You love me, don't you?" she murmured.

"What do you make such a FUSS for?" cried Paul, all in suffering because
of her extreme emotion. "Why can't you be ordinary with him?"

She let the child go, and rose, and said nothing. Her intensity, which
would leave no emotion on a normal plane, irritated the youth into
a frenzy. And this fearful, naked contact of her on small occasions
shocked him. He was used to his mother's reserve. And on such occasions
he was thankful in his heart and soul that he had his mother, so sane
and wholesome.

All the life of Miriam's body was in her eyes, which were usually dark
as a dark church, but could flame with light like a conflagration. Her
face scarcely ever altered from its look of brooding. She might have
been one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead. Her body
was not flexible and living. She walked with a swing, rather heavily,
her head bowed forward, pondering. She was not clumsy, and yet none of
her movements seemed quite THE movement. Often, when wiping the dishes,
she would stand in bewilderment and chagrin because she had pulled
in two halves a cup or a tumbler. It was as if, in her fear and
self-mistrust, she put too much strength into the effort. There was
no looseness or abandon about her. Everything was gripped stiff with
intensity, and her effort, overcharged, closed in on itself.

She rarely varied from her swinging, forward, intense walk. Occasionally
she ran with Paul down the fields. Then her eyes blazed naked in a kind
of ecstasy that frightened him. But she was physically afraid. If
she were getting over a stile, she gripped his hands in a little hard
anguish, and began to lose her presence of mind. And he could not
persuade her to jump from even a small height. Her eyes dilated, became
exposed and palpitating.

"No!" she cried, half laughing in terror--"no!"

"You shall!" he cried once, and, jerking her forward, he brought her
falling from the fence. But her wild "Ah!" of pain, as if she were
losing consciousness, cut